The New York Post has reported that the District Attorney (equivalent of the DPP in Guyana) has dropped charges against a former Yankee Stadium security guard, Guyanese Roger Levans. Levans, 56, resides in South Ozone Park with his family. It was found that illegal drugs was placed in Levans’ luggage in Guyana on a return trip he made from New York. The substance in his luggage was intercepted in a random search at JFK and he was subsequently arrested and charged for trafficking in narcotics. Levans pleaded not guilty to the charges.
The paper said Levans subsequently lost his job and faced the threat of spending the rest of his life in jail as a result of someone planting two bricks of cocaine in his luggage.
Roger Levans
Reports indicate that Levans’ problem began on December 29, 2010, after he got off his Delta Air Lines flight from Guyana — where he was visiting family for Christmas — and did not end until March, when the US Attorney’s Office in Brooklyn finally dropped drug charges against him. Levans on Wednesday filed a lawsuit against Delta in Queens Superior Court, citing severe emotional distress, financial loss and damage to his reputation.
Levans related that as he went through Customs at JFK, he was asked what he was carrying. He said; “I told them I had cooked rabbit and fish” in one suitcase, he said.
But when that piece of luggage went through the security scanner, “I heard the officer say, ‘I’m seeing something here, what is this?’ I was looking at it, it was kind of shocking,” he recalled. “I wanted to know what he saw. He put the suitcase on the counter and when he opened the suitcase, there was no lock on it.” And there was a big black bag with cocaine right alongside the fish and rabbit, he said. “I was like, ‘How did this get into my suitcase?’ ” he recalled.
“The cocaine was literally taped up with brown tape. I was scared when I saw this thing. Then the inspector looked at me and said I was in a lot of trouble.”
Levans said when he checked in at Cheddi Jagan International Airport in Guyana, all three of his suitcases were secured with small locks. But at the JFK Customs check, “there was a tiny ribbon on the handle of one suitcase. It was never there before,” he said. “I was handcuffed and then taken to another room,” he said. “I was stripped. They told me to take off my clothes . . . bend down. After they found nothing, they told me to put back on my clothes. They handcuffed my hands and my feet. They shackled me to a bench.”
Levans was then put in a cell and denied even a call to his wife. The horror continued for three months, he said — during which time Levans was being investigated in both the U.S. and Guyana. But what investigators found was that Levans’ luggage had been tampered with, said his lawyer, Michael Borrelli.
“I could have spent up to 40 years in prison” on the charges, he said. Borrelli said Levans was suspended from his Yankee Stadium gig. He was reinstated when he was cleared of charges, but to a different post.
