Cops find 3.9TONS of marijuana packed into tanker truck

Police in Texas discovered nearly four tons of marijuana packed into a tanker truck when an officer pulled over the driver on a routine traffic stop.

The $3.4million drug bust came in San Patricio County, Texas, on Tuesday when a Texas Department of Public Safety trooper stopped the 1999 truck for a cargo inspection - something troopers routinely do for commercial vehicles.


The driver, Paul Anthony Simmons, 45, was arrested for possession of marijuana. He is being held on $1million bail.Simmons is from nearby Robstown, outside of Corpus Christi.

A photo of the drug seizure shows dozens of plastic-wrapped bales of marijuana. The weight of the drugs was 7816 pounds. It filled nearly the entire tanker trailer, police said. The drug bust is the largest in recent memory, police said. However, it's not the biggest seizure ever.

In January, authorities seized about seven tons of marijuana on the U.S.-Mexico border in Arizona.
It's not clear where Simmons' truck had come from or where it was bound.

'It's a big, significant seizure,' Texas Department of Public Safety spokesman Sergeant Johnny Hernandez told NBC News