Police had to deploy a helicopter to track down the 17-year-old suspected of offering drugs on wheels.
An enterprising Australian teen who fashioned an insulated cooler to ferry cannabis to customers in his Melbourne-area suburb was nabbed over the weekend for operating a mobile cannabis unit.
After deploying a helicopter to track down the teen, Carrum Downs Police arrested the 17-year-old on June 18 while he was driving the motorized “chilly bin,” which had been made by hand, according to the New Zealand Herald.
Per 9 News, the teen attracted the attention of residents of the Carrum Downs suburb in southeast Melbourne.
The motorized unit was well-equipped with the portable cooler to hold drugs, had affixed traffic signs and carried two shovels, the station reports.
A police Facebook post notes officers responded after receiving a call about a “speeding motorized Esky,” an Australian brand of coolers.
“Utilizing Pol Air, members tracked the speeding Esky” to make “a dynamic arrest,” the post reads.
When officers checked out the inside of the cooler, they found items of value. Police called it “a motorized mobile drug trafficking Esky,” with media outlets reporting there was weed prepared for sale, electronic scales and a dirty bong.
Images released by the police show a “Slow” sign on the back of the unit and a “Slippery When Wet” sign attached to one side of the cooler.
One media report describes the unit as an unroadworthy vehicle. According to Pedestrian, the teen sat on top of the cooler, with his legs dangling over its front, while operating the homemade contraption.
Police say the teen has been charged, although did not specify what those were. The cooler, for its part, was taken off the road.
While the “Slippery When Wet” sign was enough to prompt this Facebook response, “Not slippery enough,” other comments to the police post tipped their hats to the teen’s ingenuity. “What an entrepreneur,” noted one. “You gotta give him points for the level of ingenuity,” added another.
According to Australia Criminal Law Group, although “possession and use of cannabis is a criminal offence,” convictions related to having small amounts of the illegal drug are unlikely.
“Victoria rules that up to 50 grams of cannabis will attract a caution and the opportunity to attend an education program (Victoria Cannabis Cautioning Program),” the information notes, adding that “only two cautions will be issued.”
It’s certainly not the only time a “delivery” person has been nabbed for illegal weed. Two summers ago in Ontario, police pulled over a Jeep expecting to find a suspected suspended driver and, instead, found the driver’s illegal dispensary on wheels, per CBC News.
Last year in the U.K., a 17-year-old accused of dealing drugs tried to blend in with the many other food delivery workers on the road during COVID-19 by disguising himself as a worker for a food delivery service. The ruse didn’t work.
Also last year, an Indian woman fed up with what she believed was her husband’s wandering eye devised a scheme to plant cannabis plants on her husband’s auto-rickshaw and then rat him out to police.
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