Photo: UroshPetrovic (Getty Images)
In what many would assume to be a plot line from AMC’s Breaking Bad, a former Kentucky Fried Chicken is in the midst of a controversy. Authorities claim the fast food joint was being used as a front for an illegal drug smuggling operation after discovering a drug tunnel in the restaurant.
According to Arizona police, a hole eight inches in diameter (barely large enough to fit a 10-piece family bucket) was found in the kitchen floor of the abandoned KFC. Many may have assumed this was nothing more than a broken down building falling victim to the dry desert heat, but authorities felt otherwise after arresting the building’s owner and seizing 325 pounds of drugs in his vehicle during a routine traffic stop.
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That unexpected discovery lead Drug Enforcement Agents to put a camera down the hole, where it revealed a 600-foot long underground drug tunnel that emerged on the other side of the U.S. border with Mexico. The exit point was a trap door located under a bed in a home.
It wasn’t just the drug tunnel that had authorities in awe, however, as more than $1 million worth of cocaine, methamphetamine, fentanyl, and heroin were stashed in the underground warehouse – enough to make Gus Fring and Los Pollos Hermanos blush.
“It’s very difficult in our area to get over that wall. You either are going to take a drone and fly it over or you tunnel underneath it,” San Luis Police Chief Richard Jessup told the Washington Post. “Of course, if you can’t go over the wall, you go under the wall.”
Most underground tunnels are usually reserved for the transportation of cheaper and more easily transportable drugs, but not this one, which understandably had authorities on edge.
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“Generally with tunnels what we’ve seen is marijuana,” Jessup said. “This was a purely hard narcotics tunnel. Everything that we seized was hard narcotics. So I think that’s what makes this tunnel a little unique and frankly a little more scary than some of the other ones we’ve seen.”
What do you think about a new slogan, Colonel Sanders? “Cocaine, it’s finger lickin’ good!” should have poultry fans beating down the doors. And if that doesn’t work, how about re-branding with fried chicken beer?
