Two teenagers stopped alongside a rural stretch of road in Hilmar were arrested for cocaine possession on Thursday.
A Merced County Sheriff’s deputy and a detective with the department’s agricultural crimes unit were in the area of Prairie Flower Road and Williams Avenue investigating a stolen tractor shortly after midnight Thursday, when they noticed a suspicious vehicle.
The vehicle had false registration tags and a search of the car turned up a digital scale, hidden under a seat, which was coated with a white powdery substance. The substance was later identified as cocaine, said sheriff’s spokesman Deputy Tom MacKenzie.
The deputy and the detective also found a small plastic bag containing about two grams of cocaine and a rolled up dollar bill to snort the narcotic, MacKenzie said.
The two teenagers in the car, Mychael Jackson and Brandon Fletcher, both 19  and of Modesto, admitted to pulling over to the side of the road and snorting the cocaine just prior to being stopped.
Both were booked into Merced Jail on possession of a controlled substance and remain on $10,000 bail.