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Dupont man will serve at least 10 years for child sex charges

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Police: Heroin packets fall from man’s pants during search

<p>READING &#8212; Fourteen people were arrested in a multi-county drug trafficking investigation that involved the search of three locations in Hazleton and one in Butler Township.</p><p>State police announced the results of the investigation Thursday.</p><p>Two men from Hazleton, Yensi Mateo, age unknown, and Manel Blijden, 33, were among the 14 people arrested on Tuesday.</p><p>State police said search warrants were served at 939 W. First St., 555 Peace St., 724 N. Laurel St., all in Hazleton, and 109 Debbie Drive., Butler Township., and two locations in Schuylkill County.</p><p>According to state police, troopers with the Vice Narcotics Unit in Reading, the Schuylkill County Drug Task Force and Schuylkill County Sheriff&#8217;s Office initiated the investigation several months ago, centering in the Hazleton area and other areas of southern Luzerne County.</p><p>The investigation uncovered large-scale narcotic traffickers were receiving illegal drugs from suppliers as far as California and Massachusetts.</p><p>State police said the drugs peddled from other states were distributed within Luzerne, Schuylkill and Berks counties.</p><p>Authorities in multiple areas began serving arrest and search warrants just after 6 a.m. Tuesday apprehending 14 people.</p><p>Mateo and Blijden were charged with multiple counts of drug trafficking offenses. They were jailed at the Luzerne County Correctional Facility, Wilkes-Barre, without bail due to being a danger to society, court records say.</p><style>
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<div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta><p>By Ed Lewis</p><p>elewis@www.timesleader.com</p></bylineMeta></div>

Four Hazleton area locations searched in multi-county drug sweep