Student Finds Package With 4.4 Lbs. of Cocaine

A University of Pennsylvania graduate student two weeks ago discovered a package addressed to a school fraternity that contained 4.4 pounds of cocaine with a street value of about $1.1 million, university officials said.

The grad student, a teaching assistant in the Romance Languages department, found the cocaine in a package of hollowed-out Spanish reference books in the mail room where he was grading papers, said Frederick Richards, a university news office spokesman.

The package was addressed to Williams Hall, home of the Romance Languages department, but bore the street address of a Penn fraternity, Pi Lamda Phi, three blocks away.. The package, marked with Miami and Colombia postmarks, had arrived at the mail room three weeks earlier, said Randall Lane, a reporter for The Daily Pennsylvanian, the student newspaper.

Members of the fraternity were surprised by the package and had no idea why it came, said sophomore frat member Robert Brown.

The Drug Enforcement Agency, U.S. Customs, and the Philadelphia police are conducting an investigation to find out how and why the cocaine-filled package arrived where it did, Richards said.

The graduate student, whose name the university and student newspaper are withholding, told The Daily Pennsylvanian he opened the partially torn package after he became interested in the subject matter of the reference books.

The teaching assistant contacted the professor for whom he is working, and in turn the professor, whose name is also being kept a secret, called the public safety department on campus, Richards said.

Richards was the only university official contacted who would comment on the cocaine-filled parcel.

Director of the public safety department John Logan knew of the drugs the Friday they were discovered but did not contact either university President Sheldon Hackney or Senior Vice-President Helen O'Bannon, according to Lane.

The two senior administrators did not learn of the discovery until contacted by student reporters the next Monday, Lane said. Logan refused to comment on the matter.

Officials found a name on the package but refused to release it, Lane said. He said that a secretary in the languages department told him the name was not that of a Penn student.

Police have said they think that the smuggler probably addressed the package to the academic department so it would pass through customs, Lane said. Lane added that the police also said the large quantity of drugs indicates that this probably isn't the first shipment.

Lane said a similar incident occurred at Penn two years ago. A package of cocaine addressed to a different fraternity actually made it to the frat house. After discovering the drugs, the fraternity members called the police. The cocaine disappeared and has never been accounted for, Lane said.