RALEIGH -- Police arrested a 47-year-old man and his two teenage sons this week on charges that they have distributed methamphetamine, possibly to sites across the country, authorities reported.
Drug investigators took them into custody Tuesday after police intercepted two packages containing the drug at a Raleigh shipping office, court records show.
Joseph Dennis Rambo, 47, Zechariah Rashad Rambo, 19, and Elijah Khalid Rambo, 17, were arrested Tuesday at their home at 1513 Roaring Rapids Road in East Raleigh. All three were charged with one count each of conspiracy to traffic meth. Zechariah Rambo faces additional charges of one count of manufacturing meth and one count of maintaining a dwelling place for keeping and selling the drug.
The charges concern the alleged trafficking of 400 or more grams of meth, a crime that brings the state's harshest penalties for trafficking the narcotic.
A search warrant application made public Thursday indicates that police became interested in the home on Roaring Rapids Road after six suspicious parcels were seized last week from a Ship on Site store on Rogers Lane. Each package bore a return address in Midlothian, Va., registered to Zechariah Rambo, according to the court affidavit.
Four of the parcels were forwarded to postal inspectors, but police opened two of them and found meth, according to the affidavit.
Postal officials in Virginia indicated that mail to the Midlothian address was being forwarded to the house on Roaring Rapids Road. Raleigh police staked out the home and found Zechariah Rambo coming and going using a car with Virginia plates.
Raleigh police spokesman Jim Sughrue on Thursday said there was nothing "hazardous about the residence," where police searched for evidence against the Rambos.
"There was no [meth] lab there in the traditional sense," Sughrue said. "The house does not present any danger to the neighborhood."
Police inspectors and a K-9 unit searched the house Tuesday afternoon. Officers encountered hazardous chemicals and brought in a drug expert wearing a respirator and protective gloves to complete the search, according to the court affidavit. Several as yet unidentified liquids, crystals, powders and plants were seized, along with several Ziploc baggies containing materials that tested positive in the field for meth.
All three Rambos made their first court appearance Wednesday. Zechariah Rambo's bail was set at $3 million; bail for Joseph and Elijah Rambo was set at $1 million.
