More than $3 million in cocaine discovered after South Texas car crash

A two-vehicle crash in South Texas on Memorial Day turned into a seizure of more than $3 million worth of drugs, officials said Thursday.

Seventy bundles of cocaine were found in three burlap bags in the back of a BMW after the crash on a state route west of Rio Grande City, the Texas Department of Safety said.

The drugs are estimated to be worth more than $3.3 million, and the bags weighed a total of 180 pounds, the department said in a statement.

The driver of the BMW, who later turned himself in to Starr County sheriff’s deputies, faces drug possession charges, the department said.

The driver was not identified in the statement, and DPS did not immediately respond to a request for more details Thursday night. A representative from the sheriff’s office could not immediately be reached.

The accident happened not far from the U.S.-Mexico border, but the state department of public safety’s statement did not say where the drugs are believed to have originated from.

Rio Grande City is about 40 miles west of McAllen.

While it is unclear where the drugs seized Monday came from, the Drug Enforcement Administration said in a recent report that Mexican criminal organizations dominate the wholesale distribution of cocaine to the United States. Colombian groups control the supply.