Police Crack Sophisticated Drug Dealing Operation In Tarentum
TARENTUM (KDKA) -- Police believe heroin may now be tougher to find on the streets in the Alle-Kiski Valley area, after a undercover drug bust in Tarentum.
Police from Tarentum, Harrison Township and agents from the State Attorney General's office – armed with a search warrant - raided an apartment in the 200 block of Seventh Avenue, in Tarentum, searching for 34-year-old Jose Molina Delgato.
He was wanted on conspiracy, and drug possession and distribution charges.
He was nowhere around, but police arrested two others in the apartment, and confiscated a car Delgato was seen driving.
However, it wasn't registered to him. Inside the car, with the help of a drug-sniffing K-9, officers uncovered a hidden compartment inside a back panel, containing an estimated 2,500 stamped bags of heroin, and a .9 mm pistol.
Delgato – and others working for him – may have been selling as much as 2,500 stamped bags of heroin every week in the Tarentum area, according to Det. Sgt. Mark Glogowski, of the Tarentum Police Department.
Glogowski told KDKA, "Delgato was the one bringing [the drugs] in, he was the one dispersing it."
Two people who shared the apartment with Delgato, 30-year-old Gustave Cramer, Jr., and 27-year-old Courtney Garritano are lodged in the Allegheny County Jail on drug-related charges.
Glogowski said the only way to activate the car's remote controlled panel was to turn the car ignition on, activate the rear defroster and then take a small magnet, which police found hidden under the brake pedal, then place the magnet beneath the fog icon on the dash panel.
The door to the secret compartment, in a rear panel, behind the driver's seat, could be easily popped open.
Police believe most of the heroin was sold out of the car, and not from the apartment in Tarentum.
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