{"id":69400,"date":"2017-06-26T19:28:22","date_gmt":"2017-06-27T01:28:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/suspected-drug-kingpin-fails-to-show-up-for-jury-trial\/"},"modified":"2017-06-27T01:28:22","modified_gmt":"2017-06-27T01:28:22","slug":"suspected-drug-kingpin-fails-to-show-up-for-jury-trial","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/suspected-drug-kingpin-fails-to-show-up-for-jury-trial\/","title":{"rendered":"Suspected drug kingpin fails to show up for jury trial"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><figure class=\"wp-block-image naviga-inline-image naviga-align-left alignleft\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/imengine.public.prod.dur.navigacloud.com\/?uuid=7db6ed1b-bc2e-455a-ad77-7d7b2f58c9e9&amp;function=cover&amp;type=preview&amp;source=false&amp;width=2000\" width=\"1000\" height=\"1333\" alt=\"Estrada\" class=\"naviga-image\" loading=\"lazy\"><figcaption><span class=\"caption\">Estrada<\/span><span class=\"credit\">du1-i-syn<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p><p>An Arizona man suspected of importing and distributing large quantities of heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine in La Plata County was a no-show this week at his scheduled jury trial.<\/p>\n<p>District Court Judge Suzanne Carlson issued a no-bail arrest warrant for Salvador Estrada, who is charged with importing and distributing narcotics, among other charges, related to his arrest in January 2016.<\/p>\n<p>The jury trial was scheduled to start Monday; everyone showed up, including potential jurors, except for the defendant.<\/p>\n<p>His Durango defense lawyer, Brian Schowalter, declined to comment Friday. Efforts to reach his Denver defense lawyer, John M. Richilano, were unsuccessful Friday afternoon.<\/p>\n<p>Estrada was free on a $150,000 cash bail, which he forfeits by being on the lam.<\/p>\n<p>Estrada was arrested in connection with a nine-month investigation, dubbed \u201cOperation Bad Mule,\u201d which culminated with the seizure of about $1.3 million worth of heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine by the Southwest Drug Task Force in La Plata County.<\/p>\n<p>He was one of three arrested on suspicion of trafficking drugs into the region. The others were Stacy Lutz and Raquel Salazar, all of Casa Grande, Arizona.<\/p>\n<p>Lutz pleaded guilty to two counts of felony drug possession and was sentenced to a year in jail and three years probation. Salazar pleaded guilty to intent to distribute controlled substances and was sentenced to four years probation.<\/p>\n<p>Authorities seized 10 pounds of meth, 7 pounds of heroin, 2.3 ounces of cocaine, $5,100 in cash and two automobiles.<\/p>\n<p>The task force characterized Estrada as the kingpin of the drug smuggling ring.<\/p>\n<p>Estrada faces several decades in prison if found guilty.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Arizona man charged with trafficking meth, heroin and cocaine<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":69401,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[133,168,969,28,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-69400","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-courts","tag-crime","tag-drug-trafficking","tag-headlines","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69400","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69400"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69400\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69401"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69400"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=69400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}