Suspect's Giveaway: He Was 'Walking Awkwardly'

Police say they found heroin in man's underwear at JFK Airport
By Evann Gastaldo,  Newser Staff
Posted Apr 16, 2014 9:10 AM CDT
Suspect's Giveaway: He Was 'Walking Awkwardly'
   (Shutterstock)

Pro tip: If you're going to smuggle heroin in your underwear, try to walk like a normal person while doing so. Bernard Charles apparently couldn't manage that, so when Customs and Border Protection officers spotted him "walking awkwardly" at New York's JFK Airport on April 1, they patted him down—and found a "hard object in [his] groin area" that ended up being two clear packages holding 1.79 pounds of heroin, according to US Homeland Security.

Charles, a 42-year-old citizen of Trinidad and Tobago, was initially detained when he disembarked Caribbean Airlines Flight 520 and appeared "visibly nervous," avoiding eye contact; customs officers were examining his suitcase at the time, CBS New York reports, and they brought him to a private search room. That's when they noticed his gait and patted him down, the New York Daily News reports. The drugs he was allegedly carrying are worth more than $70,000 on the street, according to authorities. He faces 10 years in prison for drug smuggling. (A celeb recently confessed to smuggling cocaine onto planes, for her own personal use.)

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