Col. Falls man sentenced for meth

A 20-year-old Columbia Falls man was sentenced Thursday during U.S. Court proceedings in Missoula to five years in federal prison.

According to a news release from the U.S. Department of Justice, Lucas Brennan previously pleaded guilty to possession of methamphetamine with the intent to distribute.

On Feb. 26, law enforcement officers received information from a man who had located a large amount of meth inside the bathroom of his home.

The resident said the meth belonged in part to Mexican citizen Ramon Gaspar-Ochoa, 27, who had recently stayed at the home with two friends.

The resident said he had seen Gaspar-Ochoa and Brennan remove the meth from the engine compartment of a Cadillac and that Gaspar-Ochoa had an extremely large amount of cash on him.

The next day, agents searched the home and found one pound of meth under the stairs. In a subsequent interview, the resident said Brennan — a transient friend of his who stays with him occasionally — asked if three friends of his could stay at the resident’s home.

The resident told the agents that he knew the three people had come up from Phoenix, Ariz., to transport drugs and that he would receive new clothes and rent money in exchange for allowing them to stay in the home and store drugs there.

In addition to prison time, Brennan was sentenced to four years of supervised release and was ordered to pay a special assessment of $100.

Gaspar-Ochoa previously pleaded guilty to conspiracy to distribute meth and was sentenced Oct. 5 to 21 years and 10 months in prison.

The investigation that led to the arrest of Brennan and Gaspar-Ochoa was a joint effort between the Northwest Montana Drug Task Force, the Montana Division of Criminal Investigation and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.