Pregnant woman sold heroin from hospital bed
A pregnant woman has been caught selling heroin from her hospital bed while waiting for doctors to perform a Caesarean section. Her customers included a cripple who hid the drugs in his hollow cane.
Police in Anshan, Liaoning province, arrested Zhang Yang and her husband, Fu Yushan, for possession of 355 grams of heroin and for selling drugs from her hospital bed. Zhang was arrested a day after she gave birth. She has been released on bail.
Her husband is still being detained, according to Zhang Donghui, a vice-director of the Gonghe public security bureau.
He said police received a tip-off about a sudden increase in the heroin trade in the area. They tailed a known drug addict, who is lame, and searched him as he was returning from a visit to the Lishan Hospital's maternity ward.
They found 5 grams of heroin in his walking stick. The addict admitted he had bought it for 2,000 yuan (HK$1,880) from a pregnant woman in the hospital's maternity ward. When police searched the woman they found 2,000 yuan in cash and a small quantity of heroin.
When her husband arrived, he was carrying a shoebox that contained more than 355 grams of the drug, which had a street value of more than 150,000 yuan, the police said.
The couple confessed they had bought 400 grams of the drug in Guangdong and had already sold about 50 grams, mostly from the inconspicuous surrounds of the maternity hospital.
Mr Zhang of the public security bureau said anyone caught with more than 150 grams of a drug could be sentenced to death. But he said that since Zhang had just given birth, she would most likely be given a suspended death sentence.
There are at least 4,000 drug addicts in Anshan, a city of two million people, according to Cui Wei, a spokesman for Anshan's drug prohibition office.
