A retired Marine Corps captain, who was caught with a kilogram brick of cocaine last year when the small plane he was learning to fly made an emergency landing on an Oceanside highway, was sentenced Wednesday in San Diego federal court to two years and six months in federal prison.
Troy Othneil Smith, 36, pleaded guilty in January to two counts of possession of cocaine with intent to distribute, admitting he had also mailed a package of cocaine across the country in 2023.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Lyndzie Carter told U.S. District Judge Ruth Bermudez Montenegro on Wednesday that the 21-year-old flight instructor who made the emergency landing with Smith on Sept. 26 on state Route 76 was not knowingly involved in transporting drugs, despite his initial arrest. Carter said she questioned Gabriel Breit for three hours and determined he was unaware that Smith, his student, was carrying drugs in a backpack as the pair flew from Arizona to Oceanside.
Breit, a certified commercial pilot and flight instructor, lost his license for several months and had to fight to get it restored, Carter told the judge. “This derailed this young man’s career,” she said.
A plane that made an emergency landing Sept. 26, 2024, on state Route 76 near Canyon Drive in Oceanside is hauled into an airport for an investigation by Federal Aviation Administration investigators. (Oceanside Police Department)Court documents unsealed shortly after the aircraft emergency revealed that the Drug Enforcement Administration and U.S. Postal Inspection Service had been investigating Smith for more than a year for allegedly mailing a total of more than 2.6 pounds of cocaine to North Carolina in several shipments sent from North County post offices. Carter wrote in sentencing documents that Smith was learning to fly so he could pilot cross-country distribution trips.
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Smith and his attorney had asked for a sentence no longer than 18 months, citing his honorable military service and his lack of a prior criminal record.
“While the offenses are serious, they do not involve violence or weapons,” defense attorney Ashby Sorensen wrote in a sentencing memorandum. “Mr. Smith’s involvement did not include sophisticated trafficking operations or cartel affiliations. Rather, they reflect a discrete and personal attempt to mitigate severe financial stress.”
Sorensen argued in sentencing documents that Smith’s “inadvertent failure to discontinue military aid” had resulted in the garnishment of his military disability payments that he’d become dependent on. “Smith began self-medicating with marijuana and cocaine to cope with anxiety and insomnia,” his attorney wrote, then turned to drug distribution as an income source.
Smith’s argument that his actions were financially motivated was undercut by the “thousands (of dollars) he was spending on private flight lessons,” the prosecutor told Montenegro.
The judge sided with the prosecution’s 30-month sentence recommendation. Montenegro cited criminal conduct that “spanned over at least 13 months and took significant planning” and also the dangerous emergency landing in which “he or others could have been injured or killed.”
That occurred around 1:45 a.m. on Sept. 26 on SR-76 near Canyon Drive in Oceanside after a nearly three-hour flight from Mesa, Ariz., according to documents in the case. As the pilot and Smith entered San Diego County airspace, they began experiencing mechanical issues with the single-engine Piper Cherokee and initially planned an ocean landing.
The aircraft began working again when they were over the water, and they turned the plane toward the Oceanside Municipal Airport. But the engine shut off a second time before they arrived, prompting the pilot to land about a mile west of the airport, according to court documents. A mechanic who inspected the aircraft observed that it likely malfunctioned because the fuel tank that a fuel gauge selector was set to was empty, even though a different fuel tank was full.
When Oceanside police officers arrived, they noticed Smith pacing back and forth while carrying his backpack, according to court documents. The officers alleged that when Smith believed no one was watching, he tried to unzip the backpack and hide the roughly 2.2-pound brick of cocaine in bushes next to the roadway.
Smith also admitted in his plea agreement to carrying a large wad of cash and a small vial of cocaine in his pocket that morning.
At that time, Smith had been under investigation for more than a year, since June 2023, when postal inspectors in North Carolina alerted their San Diego counterparts that packages of drugs were arriving in their state from post offices across North County, according to documents in the case. While Smith pleaded guilty to sending just one of those packages, he admitted in his plea agreement that he’d also sent others.
A search of Smith’s residence turned up drug ledgers and food storage items that are commonly used to package and try to conceal drugs that are sent through the mail, according to prosecutors.
Carter told the judge Wednesday that the government considered a veteran’s diversion program for Smith but ultimately decided it was unwarranted given his “intimate involvement” in distributing drugs.
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