Man Collapses, Dies Next to $12M Worth of Pot

When police received a report Monday that a man was slumped over next to a white van and tractor-trailer in Norcross, Ga., they were likely more focused on the man than on the van. And it turned out the man, 31-year-old Johnny Taylor of Bridgeport, Conn., was dead, apparently of natural causes, the AP reports. But as they were waiting for medical examiners to show up, deputies say they caught a whiff of something coming from the van, per WRDW—the pungent smell of pot. When the officers checked out the van, they found a box with sealed bags of marijuana inside. They spotted similar boxes in the back of the truck and obtained a warrant, after which they found several hundred pounds of marijuana, with an estimated street value of $12 million.

Security surveillance shows a man dropping off the tractor-trailer the night before, then leaving in a car; the white van pulled up alongside it shortly after. Cops have been able to interview the man who dropped off the tractor-trailer, per WXIA: He showed back up on Monday to the parking lot while cops were still there and told them the deceased had asked him for lessons on driving the truck. He hasn't been arrested and may have been in the dark about what Taylor planned to put into the truck. (Border agents found 1.4K pounds of pot in … coconuts.)