Walden man allegedly caught with bags of fentanyl

A Walden man allegedly caught with thousands of bags of fentanyl on Interstate 91 last year has reached a plea agreement with federal prosecutors. Antonio Vergara, 29, remains in federal detention on a felony charge of possession of narcotics with the intent to distribute. On Feb. 6, a notice of plea agreement was posted in federal court documents with a change-of-plea hearing scheduled for March 16 at 2:30 p.m. before U.S. District Court Judge Christina Reiss in Burlington. The terms of the plea deal are not public yet. Vergara was accused in October of 2022 of fleeing FBI investigators in Massachusetts in a white Audi Q3 at over 120 miles per hour until Vermont State Police Sgt. Lyle Decker deployed “spike strips” on I-91 Newbury. Police said that after Vergara was stopped by Sgt. Decker, a member of the Vermont Drug Task Force noticed a black plastic bag on the front passenger seat of the car that appeared to contain pre-packaged illegal drugs. Police said there were an estimated 5,500 individual bags that later field-tested positive for fentanyl. According to court documents, Vergara told police the drugs were for his “personal use.” The next day, law enforcement said they located 5,000 more bags of suspected heroin/fentanyl in the median strip of Interstate 91 less than half a mile from where the defendant’s vehicle was stopped. Vergara is being held in federal detention at Northwest State Correctional Facility in St. Albans.