A GUYANESE national was nabbed trying to smuggle into the United States a rum-and-coke drug cocktail which he had in his luggage at the John F. Kennedy Airport, according to U.S. authorities.Cleveland Charles arrived in New York on Saturday last aboard a Caribbean Airlines flight from the Cheddi Jagan International Airport in Guyana, and was selected for inspection by Customs and Border Protection officers.
Sharp-eyed officers focused on a bottle of 12-year-old El Dorado rum inside Charles’s suitcase, and Charles said he had purchased it at a duty-free shop at the airport in Guyana, the Brooklyn Federal Court complaint has said. A customs officer “then opened the bottle, which contained a thick syrup-like substance with a strong odour that appeared inconsistent with rum,” Department of Homeland Security special agent Scott Salamon stated in the complaint. A field test of the liquid came up positive for cocaine, according to Salamon.