‘I knew it,’ neighbor says after Bethlehem cocaine bust
When the FBI arrested a Bethlehem man on a drug trafficking charge in an upscale neighborhood, Ed Fiedler was anything but surprised.
”I knew it,” Fiedler said emphatically of neighbor Antonio Miguel Arias, 36, who allegedly helped smuggle nearly 500 kilograms of cocaine from Colombia.
”I thought about calling the FBI myself,” Fiedler said in an interview, ”but I was worried they’d think I was crazy.”
The flow of expensive cars with New York plates that stopped at 471 N. Pine Top Circle for just a few moments, and Arias’ claim of being a truck driver and a fruit importer, according to Fiedler, has had neighbors talking.
Federal agents Tuesday made those suspicions look like more than idle gossip when they arrested Arias in one of Bethlehem’s most exclusive neighborhoods. Authorities say they confiscated two shipments of cocaine with a street value of more than $10 million from the home.
Neighbors knew Arias as ”Gilberto,” one of several aliases FBI officials say he used.
According to the FBI, Arias used his Bronx fruit importing and trucking business to smuggle the cocaine from Colombia in pallets of bananas and other fruits into Bridgeport, Conn., and ultimately into the Bronx. The FBI says it intercepted one shipment of bananas containing 444 kilos of cocaine in August, and another with 50 kilos this week.
Fielder, a 53-year-old computer consultant who has lived on N. Pine Top Circle for nearly three years, said though Arias lived in the last house on the dead-end street, his family was known among neighbors.
Fiedler said a woman he knew only as Lorraine, who lived with Arias in the home, was known for walking her dog through the neighborhood wearing fuzzy slippers and a bathrobe.
Online county property records say Lorraine Rivera bought the home in 2004 for $655,000. A woman wearing fuzzy slippers and a bathrobe who answered the door Friday at the home declined to comment.
In May, Fiedler said he confronted Arias and his son and the woman Fiedler knows as Lorraine after they repeatedly sped up and down N. Pine Top Circle in their black BMW. After the woman Fiedler knew as Lorraine angrily yelled at him, Fiedler recalled, Arias explained that he was teaching his son to drive a stick shift, and calmly suggested they be friends, not enemies.
”He said we should work together, but she gave it to me pretty good,” Fiedler said. ”I reported it to police, but they suggested I not confront them again. I think I’m going to follow that advice.”
Arias, who federal officials say is a citizen of the Dominican Republic, remains in Lehigh County Prison awaiting extradition to New Haven, Conn., where he could face 10 years to life in prison on a distribution charge. Two other men, Nelson B. Santiago, age unknown, of the Bronx, and Raymond Pacheco, 37, of Fairfield, Conn., who were arrested on the same charge, are due in federal court in New Haven on Monday, according to FBI spokesman Tom Carson.
No court date has been set for Arias.
SOURCE: mcall.com
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