An additional half-pound of meth worth $35,000 recovered in case where man was arrested for murder Oct. 2 and 10 pounds of meth worth $500,000 seized

Another half-pound of meth worth $35,000 was recovered in Chalmette on Friday, Oct. 5, in a case where one man was arrested for murder Oct. 2 and 10 pounds of meth worth $500,000 and $32,000 cash had been seized, Sheriff James Pohlmann said.

Sheriff’s narcotics agents have continued to work the case since the arrest of a 17-year male suspect booked with one count of first-degree murder of a man he recently traveled with to Chalmette from North Carolina, and attempted murder of the dead man’s brother, the sheriff said.

Sheriff Pohlmann said the two came to join up with the brother of the man killed, who had been living in eastern St. Bernard for some time, to help him in a large-scale meth conspiracy that was already distributing the drug in the New Orleans area.

The recovery of the additional more than half a pound of meth is tied to the murder case, Sheriff Pohlmann said, and narcotics agents continue to look into whether there is still more drugs or cash around. The Sheriff’s Office didn’t say where the latest stash of drugs was located.

The 10 pounds of meth found in the initial investigation of the murder was the largest amount of the drug ever seized in St. Bernard Parish.

Jorge Ramirez was arrested the same day Leandro Morales De La Cruz, 32, was found shot to death in a half-double he and Ramirez had rented only a week earlier in the 8500 block of Regiment Drive in Chalmette. Also, Ramirez attempted to kill the dead man’s brother, Martin De La Cruz, 26, by striking him in the head with a blunt object, Sheriff Pohlmann said. Cruz survived and has been taken into custody.

Ramirez is being held in St. Bernard Parish Prison in lieu of bond set at $1.5 million.

“The motive for the killing was to steal the narcotics’’ that had been brought to Chalmette for safekeeping as it was being distributed in the New Orleans area, Sheriff Pohlmann said.

He said Ramirez has confessed he killed the man he came here with, tried to kill the brother already living here, and took the meth he knew about and intended to go back to the Red Springs, N.C., area where he and the murder victim had just come from.