The father of the Jamaican flight attendant who was arrested for smuggling $3 million worth of cocaine in two suitcases has settled on a likely excuse.
“Somebody gave her the bag,” said the father of Marsha Gay Reynolds, who is being held without bond in New York pending extradition to Los Angeles.
Reynolds’ father spoke to the NY Post on Saturday outside the family’s South Jamaica, Queens home. He said his daughter told him she didn’t know what the bags contained when an unknown accomplice handed the bags to her in New York.
He said his daughter “broke down and cried” when the feds allowed them a moment of privacy before she was locked up.
“I’m not in a good place right now,” he told the NY Post.
Reynolds, 31, became spooked at a TSA checkpoint in Los Angeles’ LA airport last Friday when a TSA agent chose her for a random search.
The former NYU track & field runner kicked off her Gucci heels and fled barefoot down the up escalator, leaving the bags containing 70 pounds of pure coke behind.
LAX security was heavily criticized for allowing Reynolds to not only flee the airport but return sometime later to board a flight out of L.A.
The former Jamaican beauty queen turned up days later in Jamaica, Queens where she holed up in a hotel room before surrendering to federal agents.
On Wednesday a judge granted Reynolds a $500,000 bond, but assistant U.S. Attorney Alicia Washington asked the judge to delay her release pending an extradition appeal from a L.A. magistrate judge.
Washington cited the defendant’s flight risk as a factor and the ease with which she smuggled $3 million worth of drugs.
Friday was “not the only time the defendant has engaged in this conduct,” Washington told the court.
“I don’t believe anybody would trust a mule with that amount of dope the first time out,” Marshall McClain, of the Los Angeles Airport Peace Officers Association, told the Los Angeles Times.
