Report: Xolos' Daniel Gomez arrested, accused of smuggling meth
A player from Club Tijuana Premier, which is a team affiliated with Club Tijuana Xoloitzcuintles de Caliente, was reportedly arrested in the first week of April.
Daniel Gomez was arrested at the Otay Mesa border crossing on the morning of April 5 and, per a complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California, is accused of trying to smuggle nearly 48 pounds of packaged methamphetamine from Mexico into the United States, according to The San Diego Union-Tribune's Joshua Stewart. The defender, an American citizen, was apparently charged with importing a controlled substance.
Court records allegedly say:
- Gomez tried to cross the border in his Chrysler Sebring.
- Gomez told U.S. Customs and Border Protection he was travelling for work.
- An officer searched the car and noticed the spare tire in the trunk had hard spots and wasn't its usual weight.
- An X-ray machine revealed "anomalies" in the spare tire.
- An officer cut the spare time open and found 23 packages made of plastic wrap, carbon paper, cardboard, and packing tape.
- A crystal substance tested positive for meth.
Gomez was reportedly interviewed by special agents from the Department of Homeland Security, and the player told them he owned the car but had traded it away three months earlier to an unnamed person, before trading again to get it back around a month earlier. He apparently claimed he was planning to have breakfast at Denny's by himself before returning to Mexico, and "did not know anything about the drugs in the vehicle."
Gomez was initially reported missing as messages were sent out looking for him, reports ESPN FC's Tom Marshall.
Xolos plays in Tijuana, Mexico, a border city just south of California.