At Greyhound rest stop, Lamar cops find "abnormally heavy" pillow filled with marijuana

Jason Ramirez

On December 17, Lamar Police Department officers contacted the driver of a Greyhound bus at Main and Holly streets, asking to deploy a routine drug detection K9. That search alerted officers to a seat in the back of the bus with a jacket and pillow, but no passenger.

The officers located a container with "a small amount of marijuana in the jacket pocket." (With the passage of Amendment 64, adults can legally possess small amounts of marijuana). But something was fishy about the pillow, Lamar police note in a news release: "When the pillow was picked up it was abnormally heavy and foreign objects could be detected by feel inside the pillow."

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Screenshot of Main and Holly in Lamar.

Lamar Chief of Police Gary McCrea tells us that the Greyhound was stopped outside a McDonald's; Ramirez had gone inside. Interviews with other bus passengers revealed his identity.

The officers contacted Ramirez, a Denver resident. He said he was not a passenger on the bus -- but the bus driver was holding a bus ticket in his name. And a computer check on the suspect revealed that he had two outstanding warrants. He was then detained and transported to the Police Annex for further investigation.

In the meantime, police obtained a search warrant, which authorized them to see what was making the pillow so abnormally heavy. They discovered several individually wrapped bricks of marijuana, with a total weight of more than eleven pounds.

Ramirez was then transported to the Prowers County Jail, where he is being held on bold set at $32,000. Court records apparently show that Ramirez's criminal history includes arrests for drunken driving, domestic abuse, assault, intimidating a witness and kidnapping.

Continue for more on the charges Ramirez is facing and the full police alert.