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Chase that ended in deadly police shooting highlights drug-trafficking problem on I-10
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BATON ROUGE - A special division of Louisiana State Police that has proven successful taking millions of dollars of drugs off the streets was involved in the deadly shooting that resulted in the death of Jose Reza-Navarro of Texas on Thursday.
Their drug interdiction unit, which is made up of nearly 20 troopers and assigned to troops across Louisiana, attempted to initiate a stop in West Baton Rouge last week. Reza-Navarro fled and was involved in multiple hit-and-run crashes as he evaded police. He was shot and killed on I-10 in Baton Rouge after State Police said he got out of his SUV and ran from a crash scene. The investigation is ongoing and the trooper involved was placed on leave.
Inside Reza-Navarro's car, troopers found 83 kilos of cocaine. That is nearly 200 pounds and worth roughly $2.5 million.
"When you think about I-10, there's so much traffic," LSP Spokesman Christian Reed said. "It's important for us to be on the road to identify the issue."
Over the past five years, State Police's drug interdiction unit took in $71,914,856 worth of illegal narcotics and made over 1,000 arrests. The numbers are still being tallied for 2022.
"We want to make sure we can minimize that and get it off roads and arrest persons carrying the drugs," Reed said.
Right now, State Police said the investigation into the shooting remains ongoing with further information to be released in coordination with the East Baton Rouge Parish District Attorney’s Office.
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