Suffolk drug suspect arrested at Canadian border after school THC case

Wilmer Castillo Garcia, a 22-year-old Guatemalan national, was taken into custody at the Lewiston Bridge by the Canada Border Services Agency after Suffolk County prosecutors said he tried to leave the United States while on recognizance in a case tied to THC gummies at William Floyd Middle School.

The case began at the Moriches school on Moriches Middle Island Road, where 12 students ages 13 and 14 became ill shortly after 10 a.m. on March 3, 2025. Suffolk County police said several students were taken by emergency responders and all but one were transported to hospitals for evaluation. School officials said a student had distributed the gummies to classmates, turning a lunch-time health scare into a criminal investigation with public-health stakes for families across the district.

Prosecutors later said investigators traced the gummies to an Instagram account called 7k_teddy and connected that online identity to Castillo Garcia. The Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office said he was arraigned on August 14, 2025, before Acting Supreme Court Justice Anthony Senft Jr. on two counts each of criminal sale of a controlled substance in the third degree and criminal possession of a controlled substance in the third degree, plus one count of criminal possession of a controlled substance in the seventh degree and one count of endangering the welfare of a child.

The office also said Castillo Garcia allegedly sold cocaine and marijuana to an undercover officer on May 5, 2025, and May 12, 2025. Prosecutors said those charges were not bail-eligible under current New York law, so he was released on his own recognizance after the indictment. That detail has become central to District Attorney Raymond A. Tierney’s argument that the state’s bail laws leave prosecutors with too little room in cases involving narcotics and children.

The April 30, 2026 arrest at the border added a new layer to a case that already combined school safety, youth drug exposure and social media-driven narcotics trafficking. For William Floyd families, it underscored how a single student-disseminated product in a middle school can lead to hospital visits, undercover buys and, months later, an arrest at an international crossing.