Man Arrested After Deputies Find Over 100 Pounds Of Marijuana During Traffic Stop

A Tulsa County Reserve Deputy arrests a Texas man and finds 109 pounds of marijuana packed in trash bags during a traffic stop. This happened just two weeks after that deputy went through training on how to catch drug traffickers.

Reserve Deputy Aaron Moody pulled over Antonio Fernandez for speeding through a construction zone, but quickly believed Fernandez was hiding something.

Moody says Fernandez later admitted to having a small amount of marijuana in the car, but Moody says he ended up finding five trash bags filled with vacuum sealed bags of marijuana in the trunk of Fernzanez' car and a gun.

Moody was recently trained in interdiction, where they’re taught to look for certain criminal behaviors. He says Fernandez' hands were shaking, he wasn't making eye contact and his story kept changing.

"Where he was coming from, that changed a couple times. Then the location of where he was going, he couldn't really pin that down,” said Moody.

Fernandez told deputies he was headed to Missouri for an MMA fight, and had been to Missouri about six months earlier. Moody says he searched a database and learned Fernandez had made the trip eight times since April.

"You start clueing in on those answers, so once those answers start jumping all over the board. You remember those things, you start diving deeper into those details,” said Moody.

Captain Michael Heisten helped bring the training to Tulsa County, and says drugs are trafficked through Oklahoma every single day because our interstates can take you anywhere in the country.

"I think this training is impactful, it is important, and I think it is a force multiplier for our deputies and the safety of the citizens in Tulsa county,” said Heisten.

Deputy Moody credits his training for the big bust.

"It is something that every officer or deputy that works the street, small town, big city, rural community, I think they need to go through,” said Moody.

Captain Heisten says these same interdiction experts taught a group of officers in southern Oklahoma recently and within 16 hours, those officers took a big load of marijuana off the streets.