San Diego County Sheriff

"Milo immediately jumped into the rear seat area of the vehicle and alerted there.”

On Thursday, December 2, Deputy Jeremy Bedingfield and his dog Milo were driving northbound on Interstate 5 near Las Pulgas Road, a Camp Pendleton exit, when Bedingfield noticed a pickup truck a little ahead. The truck was weaving so that it sometimes crossed back and forth over the lane lines. The deputy said it is his experience that when people see his marked vehicle, they are sometimes so intent watching him in their rear view mirrors they do not maintain their own lane.

He moved into the lane directly behind the Ford truck and the driver immediately moved into the next lane, the fast lane. The deputy testified that those doing criminal activities will suddenly move to avoid him, including making turns or turning into a gas station. Deputy Bedingfield said, “Everyone slows down,” so he looks for more than that.

He ran the license plate and found the vehicle was registered to a post office box in San Ysidro. Bedingfield testified that “A lot of interdicted vehicles come from that area. And it had numerous border crossings logged on to that vehicle, out-bound and in-bound.” These border crossings had begun in the last couple months.

In the December 31 pre-trial hearing, the deputy said most large quantities of smuggled drugs don’t even stop in San Diego, the drugs go straight to Los Angeles, “They are not doing any business in San Diego.”

This Ford had crossed the border about one hour before Bedingfield saw it.

Because the driver was going 70 miles per hour in a 65 speed limit area, he stopped her at the CHP checkpoint in San Clemente. He asked for a driver’s license, “She told me she did not have a California driver's license, but she had a Mexico drivers license.”

Isamar Bautista, 26, then provided her insurance card which listed a Toyota Camry with Texas license plates. She was driving a large Ford F150 pickup, a four-door with crew cab and bench seat in back.

Deputy Bedingfield said F150s are commonly used for smuggling, “There are natural voids they can exploit and build compartments in them.” He said the Nissan Sentra is the most common vehicle in which officers find contraband.

“She told me that her boyfriend had purchased the truck, but she did not know any details of that transaction. She did not know the purchase price, nor other details like the mileage of the truck. She said she was the only driver of this vehicle,” the deputy testified.

“I asked her if there was anything in the vehicle that she shouldn’t have, and she volunteered that I can search her vehicle,” so he repeated the question, “And she said, you can go ahead and search it if you want.”

Canine Milo made several alerts on the vehicle. “And I opened the door and allowed Milo to jump inside, and he immediately jumped into the rear seat area of the vehicle and alerted there.” The deputy found a hidden compartment, it was custom built. “It was activated electronically with a secret combination, so we ended up having to break this one open.”

He found 27 packages that contained heroin, fentanyl, and cocaine. There were two kilograms of cocaine and seven kilograms of black tar heroin.

There were 15 kilograms of a purple powder. The deputy said he had seen information fliers that pictured purple fentanyl, but this was the first time he personally saw purple fentanyl himself.

There were three kilograms of counterfeit oxycodone pills, he said, “They commonly contain fentanyl.” These counterfeit pills were stamped with M30, “But these varied in color and the stamps were inconsistent, so they looked illegitimate.” In all, there were 31,986 bogus oxycodone pills, the deputy remarked that if a person took one pill per day that number would last more than 87 years.

During cross examination, the deputy admitted that his dog Milo has made “false positive” alerts in past, for example when there were drugs in a vehicle but then they were removed. The deputy said he has been working with Milo for more than a year.

Defense attorney Scott Peterson protested to the judge that this traffic stop at the CHP checkpoint is 60 or 70 miles from the U.S.-Mexico border.

Isamar Bautista plead not guilty to six felony counts including transporting drugs for sale. During the hearing, her family was able to listen through a YouTube livestream.

The San Diego Sheriff described Bautista as female, Hispanic, 5 feet 4 inches tall and 175 pounds. If she is able to come up with $200,000 bail, she must explain to the court where the money came from.

Honorable judge Blaine Bowman set Bautista’s next court date as Valentine’s Day, Feb 14, in San Diego’s North County Superior courthouse.