Truck driver sentenced on drug charges after highway stop

TRENTON, N.J. – A California truck driver stopped on a New Jersey highway with 64 kilograms (141 pounds) of heroin and 10 kilograms (22 pounds) of cocaine has been sentenced to 10 years in state prison.

Henry Cruz Ventura, of Los Angeles, was sentenced Friday after pleading guilty last month to heroin possession with the intent to distribute.

The drugs were seized from his tractor-trailer last August by the New Jersey state police mobile safe freight unit on Interstate 78 in Warren County.

A second man stopped on the same highway last year was earlier sentenced to 10 years in state prison. Oscar Franco, also of California, was arrested after police found 36 kilograms (79 pounds) of heroin in his tractor-trailer when he was stopped for a routine commercial inspection.