A Brit accused of smuggling £15million worth of cocaine from the US to the UK has claimed she thought she was actually carrying two bags of “cash”.
Beautician Kim Hall, 28, from Middlesbrough, was apprehended at Chicago’s O’Hare airport while she waited to board a connecting flight to Manchester on August 18. Investigators found a massive 43kg of cocaine stashed into two suitcases before they detained the woman.
Staring down the barrel of 60 years in a US prison, Ms Hall has now claimed she agreed to bring the bags home for a duo of Brit blokes under the belief they only carried money.
Ms Hall claimed she was forced to carry the suitcases at gunpoint after being offered a free holiday to Mexico by the two men she had met on an earlier break to Portugal. She also insisted when she agreed to carry the bags, she was in the middle of a manic episode.
Ms Hall told The Sun: “I'm not a bad person. I've never been in trouble in my life and I'm not guilty of what they are accusing me of. They held a gun to my head and threatened to shoot me.
“I agreed to it because there was no reason not to. It was just money and I didn't see anything wrong in it. I was screaming at them to let me go. I thought, I'm going to end up dead if I don't carry this money.”
During her homebound trip she landed at the O’Hare airport for a connection to London where officials carried out a random bag check, suspicious of her having two suitcases. The young woman burst into tears as she was handcuffed following the discovery, the Daily Mail reports.
Her father John Hall, 59, has defended his daughter, saying she is guilty of “stupidity and naivety”. He told The Sun: “She's not a drug smuggler. She was told that it would be money she was carrying.”
