PORT ANGELES — An ounce of heroin found in Olympic Medical Center’s laundry room last week might have been sent to the hospital by mistake.
An employee in the laundry room March 16 discovered the heroin in a shipment of blankets that had arrived sealed and unopened from Pakistan, said Sgt. Tom Kuch of the Olympic Peninsula Narcotics Enforcement Team.
The employee, not quite sure what the substance was, alerted security, who then alerted authorities.
Kuch believes the heroin was shipped to the hospital accidentally.
“If it was meant to be sent over, the package looked pretty sloppily assembled,” he said. “It was in a plastic sack with a rubber band around it.”
He said the package had yellow and red writing on it in “Middle Eastern” letters.
Kuch said it’s possible it could have been intended to be shipped somewhere else but was placed in the wrong shipment.
It was also a small amount of heroin, he said, making it hard to believe it was sent on purpose. An ounce of heroin is worth about $1,500 on the street.
“Why would they send just 1 ounce of heroin all the way from Pakistan?” he said. “If you’re going to send heroin from Pakistan, it’s going to be in large quantities.
“I think it was an oversight.”
He said it was the first time he’s seen where heroin was apparently sent somewhere accidentally and called the situation “odd.”
He said drugs are occasionally found in dirty bedding from patients but never in a shipment of clean blankets.
As far as arrests go, there likely won’t be any.
Kuch said there’s little for OPNET to investigate and doesn’t believe the heroin was intended for anyone at the hospital.
No one on the U.S. end claimed the heroin, and an investigation that traced the shipment back to its source couldn’t lead to arrests because local authorities have no power overseas.
“There’s no one to arrest,” Kuch said. “Frankly, we’re onto bigger and better things — things we can actually prosecute.”
OMC’s chief executive officer, Eric Lewis, declined to comment.
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Reporter Jesse Major can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 56250, or at jmajor@peninsuladailynews.com.
