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Tropical Storm Debby has washed up a haul of cocaine worth an estimated $1m onto a beach in the Florida Keys.
A spokesperson from the Customs and Border Protection confirmed to The Independent that 25 packages of the narcotic were discovered in Islamorada, Monroe County, by a good samaritan.
The drugs were allegedly blown onto the beach as Debby made landfall as a Category 1 hurricane on Monday, causing at least five deaths and widespread damage across the region before charting a path across the southeastern states.
Authorities were alerted by an anonymous person who found the cocaine before the packages were passed on to US Border Patrol and “processed for seizure,” the CBP spokesperson added.
The CBP declined to comment when asked to provide more details on where the drugs might have come from and how the unnamed individual found them on the beach.
US Border Patrol acting chief patrol Agent Samuel Briggs II shared two photos of the massive haul in a social media post on Monday morning.
“Hurricane Debby blew 25 packages of cocaine (70 lbs.) onto a beach in the Florida Keys,” Briggs II wrote on X on Monday morning.
“Good Samaritan discovered the drugs & contacted authorities. U.S. Border Patrol seized the drugs, which have a street value of over $1 million dollars.”
Florida is just a few hundred miles away from drug trafficking hubs in the Caribbean used for transporting narcotics from South America to the US and Europe.
The Sunshine State is battling the effects of Tropical Storm Debby, which made landfall as a Category 1 hurricane along its Big Bend region on Monday morning.
Floridians braced as they faced 80mph winds, flash floods, deadly storm surges and historic amounts of rain.
At least five people have been killed, including a 13-year-old boy in Levy County after a tree fell, as the storm charts its path through Florida. A 38-year-old woman and a 12-year-old boy also died in an SUV crash in Dixie County.
More than 350,000 residents and businesses were left without power during peak outages across Florida, according to PowerOutage.us.
Debby was downgraded back to a tropical storm on Monday evening as it crossed the Florida-Georgia border. It is expected to continue to drift through southern Georgia and the South Carolina coast over the coming days.
The National Hurricane Center urged both states to prepare for “catastrophic flooding,” in an update on Tuesday morning.
South Carolina has already been battling harsh conditions, with two tornadoes wiping out power lines and causing damage to homes on Edisto Beach and Seabrook Island.
The city of Charleston is set to face historic rainfall of up to 24 inches, which is expected to peak on Wednesday.
