Glasgow M74 drugs stop: police find lamb called Pablo eating chips on the back seat
When police stopped a car on the M74 in Glasgow, they found a lamb called Pablo tucking into a bag of chips on the back seat – and a police dog later found about £14,000 of drugs under the front passenger seat.
Police officers who pulled over a car on a Glasgow motorway expected the usual questions. They did not expect a lamb in the back, happily working its way through a bag of chips.
The Volkswagen Golf was stopped on the M74 in Glasgow on 22 April 2023. On the back seat sat a lamb called Pablo – named, of all things, after the Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar.
The M74 below Cathcart Road, Glasgow, in 2023 – not the actual stop. Photo: Richard Webb / Geograph / CC BY-SA 2.0 (via Wikimedia Commons).
When the sergeant asked where the lamb had come from, a passenger told him the driver was a “trainee shepherdess”. Asked in court whether there was any evidence of that, the sergeant replied: “No, the lamb at the time was eating a bag of chips left on the back seat. There were no bottles.”
AI illustration – not the real people, lamb or dog. (Spot Gaz, our gorilla, hiding somewhere in this picture.)
Pablo was not the only surprise. A police dog called Billy then found £4,640 of cocaine and £10,050 of heroin – about £14,000 in all – under the front passenger seat.
The pair said they had rescued the lamb from the middle of the road and planned to take him back, as he had markings on his ears. He actually belonged to North Lanrigg Farm in Motherwell, whose owner had not given anyone permission to take him. A charge over the lamb was dropped part-way through the trial.
Stock photo: a Texel lamb with ear tags, 2008 – not Pablo. Photo: Evelyn Simak / Geograph / CC BY-SA 2.0 (via Wikimedia Commons).
Both were found guilty in September of possession with intent to supply. At Glasgow Sheriff Court, the 56-year-old passenger was given 300 hours of unpaid work and a six-month tag, with a curfew from 20:00 to 05:00, avoiding jail. The driver had earlier been banned from driving for 18 months and ordered to do 100 hours of unpaid work.
As for Pablo, he spent 48 to 72 hours on a farm in Ayrshire before going home. The farmer said he was in fine health and happy with “his new pet lamb pals”.
AI illustration – an imagined scene, not the real lamb or farmer.
Reported by BBC News, with further reporting by STV News and the Glasgow Times.
