Tampa Mayor Jane Castor reels in cocaine catch while fishing in the Keys

By Web staff

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    MIAMI, Florida (WFOR) — The mayor of Tampa and her family reeled in more than they bargained for during a fishing trip in the Keys.

Mayor Jane Castor said they hauled in 70 pounds of cocaine.

“My younger brother saw some debris in the water, and so we went over there because, quite often, if you fish, the smaller fish will go under any kind of shade they can get. That attracts the larger fish, like triple tail,” she said. “We thought it was shade as opposed to something shady. But, you know, the closer we got and once I saw the rip in it and see the tightly wrapped packages, I was like definitely that’s a bale of cocaine.”

The mayor said she’s never seen anything like this before while vacationing in Marathon.

“My family was a little worried, like, what if there was a tracker or something like that? I said, well the batteries are dead if that happened,” she said.

Castor said they contacted the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office and the drugs were turned over to US Border Patrol. The drugs in the bale were estimated to be worth more than a million dollars.

This wasn’t Castor’s first time bringing in evidence. She spent 31 years working for the Tampa police department and was police chief before running for mayor.

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