Couple to stand trial for drug smuggling

A husband and wife accused of trying to smuggle drugs into Alberta last year have been ordered to stand trial following their preliminary hearing Friday in Lethbridge provincial court.

Judge Gregory Maxwell committed Gurminder Singh Toor and Kirandeep Kaur Toor to each stand trial on charges of drug possession for the purpose of trafficking and drug smuggling. They are scheduled to be arraigned Jan. 14, 2019 in Lethbridge Court of Queen’s Bench.

The California couple were charged after a man and woman hauling a commercial load of produce from California to Alberta were stopped at the Coutts border Dec. 2, 2017. Border officers searched the cab of the truck and found 84 bricks of suspected cocaine weighing 99 kilograms, considered the largest cocaine seizure recorded by the Canada Border Services Agency officers in Alberta’s history.

The RCMP reported the drugs are worth between $6.5 million and $8 million on the street depending on how they’re broken down for sale. A media spokesperson for the CBSA said shortly after the incident that the drugs would provide on the street between 100,000 and 200,000 hits.

The shipment was reportedly destined for the Calgary area, RCMP said, but the drugs likely would have been shipped to other provinces once they were processed.

A border services officer was the Crown’s only witness to testify Friday during the one-day preliminary hearing. Preliminary hearings are typically held to determine whether there is enough evidence to warrant a trial, and reporting the evidence and testimony presented is generally prohibited by a publication ban.

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