A couple was arrested in Medford Tuesday with 11,000 fentanyl pills hidden in the driver’s seat of their car, officials said.
The arrests of Martin Rangel Prado, 56, and Tatum Littau, 24, were the culmination of a year-long investigation by the Clark County Sheriff’s Office. The case arose from detectives’ investigation of a drive-by shooting at a motel in Vancouver in October 2023. Detectives searched the room Rangel Prado was renting at the motel and found drugs, cash and a gun, the sheriff’s office said in a statement Friday. Rangel Prado was booked into jail, then released.
Over the summer, detectives discovered that Rangel Prado often traveled to California to buy fentanyl and distribute it in Clark County, the sheriff’s office said. Rangel Prado was arrested Aug. 25 on a return trip from California on felony warrants from the previous investigation, then released.
A few weeks later, on Sept. 17, Clark County investigators learned Rangel Prado had gone to California with his girlfriend, Littau. The sheriff’s office coordinated with police in southern Oregon, who stopped Rangel Prado’s car on his drive north and found 2.54 pounds of fentanyl pills in a bag concealed inside the back of the driver’s seat, according to his probable cause affidavit.
Both Rangel Prado and Littau have been indicted on charges of unlawful delivery and unlawful possession of a schedule 2 controlled substance, court records show.
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