Man who beat murder, drug conspiracy raps held in $1M drug bust
Weeks after walking away from allegations of his involvement in a major drug conspiracy, a Calgary man has been swept up in a monthlong probe that resulted in a nearly $1-million haul of illegal drugs.
In June, 33-year-old Joshua Lloyd Okabe got a stay of charges linking him to plans to import 450 kilograms of cocaine from the Dominican Republic, after a judge ruled he had faced an unreasonable delay in his prosecution.
Two years earlier, he also managed to walk away from a first-degree murder charge after the Crown determined there wasn’t a reasonable likelihood of conviction.
But Okabe is returning to the court after he was charged in an operation that the Calgary police gang enforcement team launched in July, amid a spike in gang-related shootings and violence linked to a quartet of slayings in Calgary’s Indo-canadian community.
On Aug. 15, police executed a search warrant on an apartment in the 500 block of Riverfront Avenue S.E. Investigators believed it was the hub of a large-scale drug storage, packaging and production operation.
During the raid, police said one man attempted to flee the scene but was arrested by pursuing officers following an extensive struggle. A second man was also taken into custody at the property.
Inside the apartment, suspected fentanyl powder had contaminated much of the residence, prompting a call to a specialized team of officers to assist in safely securing the scene. An additional search warrant also was executed on a Subaru Impreza in the building’s parkade.
Staff Sgt. Kyle Grant of the police strategic enforcement unit said the seizure represents a major blow to organized crime in the city.
“This is a significant seizure for the Calgary Police Service,” he said.
“These drugs had the potential to be very dangerous to our community and we will continue to target individuals who are involved in organized drug activity in our city.”
Among the haul seized from the property was about 4.5 kilograms of the deadly opioid fentanyl, with an estimated street value of $886,240.
Another kilogram of ketamine worth some $80,000 was also taken, along with smaller batches of cocaine, fentanyl powder, prescription drugs and 22 kilograms of phenacetin, an agent used to cut drugs.
Also taken from the property was lab equipment, colouring powders used in fentanyl production and $1,640 in cash.
Okabe is facing several drug-trafficking offences, drug production, possession of proceeds of crime and resisting arrest, along with three counts of breaching court orders. Also charged with one count of drug trafficking is 23-year-old Darwin Buccat.
Both are scheduled to make court appearances later this month.
Okabe was arrested in 2016 and charged with first-degree murder in the deaths of 39-year-old Jason Antonio and Taylor Zanoni, 23, whose deaths were both linked to the city’s drug trade. He was also charged along with two other men, a father and son, with conspiracy to import cocaine following a joint investigation between Calgary police and U.S. investigators.
Anyone with information about illegal drugs or firearms is asked to call police at 403-266-1234 or Crime Stoppers anonymously at 1-800-222-8477.