ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – Police searching for a tiger instead found a host of other items when they served a warrant at a man’s home, including an alligator, guns, more than 40 pounds of drugs and cash.
The Albuquerque Police Department said on Twitter that officers had been assisting New Mexico Game and Fish officers in serving a search warrant for the illegal possession of a tiger when they found the alligator, drugs and guns. Photos accompanying the post show guns and the animal.
The owner of the home, Carlos Giddings, was arrested and charged with felony drug charges, KOB reported.
Giddings’ attorney said his client had no tiger.
“They did not find a tiger, but they found an alligator,” Tom Clear, Giddings’ attorney, told the Albuquerque Journal. “You can’t make this stuff up.”
Police said the alligator was taken to the ABQ BioPark.
“It looks like a 3- to 4-year-old alligator, maybe three feet long? So he’s not very big,” BioPark zoo manager Lynn Tupa told KOB. “It’s hard to tell what his care was like.”
Albuquerque police said that officers seized 2 pounds of heroin, 10.5 pounds of cocaine, 29 pounds of marijuana, fentanyl pills, cannabis oil, three scales, an AK-47 rifle, an AR-15 rifle, and an FN Five-seven pistol at the house, along with $41,835.
Officers said that at a second location, they found 14 firearms, 20 pounds of marijuana, and fentanyl and Xanax pills.
Giddings allegedly told police that a person named “Gordo” from California owned the drugs and paid him for storing them at his house, the Albuquerque Journal reported.
