The pilot of a suspected drug smuggling plane makes an emergency landing on SR-76 in San Diego County

Two San Diego County men were arrested today on suspicion of cocaine smuggling after making an emergency landing in a small plane on State Route 76 in Oceanside before dawn.

According to the Oceanside Police Department, the pilot of the Piper PA-28 Cherokee safely landed the single-engine plane on the east side of the highway near Canyon Drive around 1:40 a.m. Thursday after reporting engine failure .

“As far as I know, there was no traffic and there was no bottleneck (with vehicles),” OPD Deputy Chief Taurino Valdovinos told reporters.

When officers arrived, they found the men who had been traveling on the plane – later identified as Gabriel Leon Breit, 21, and 36-year-old Troy Othneil Smith – uninjured in the area.

As officers took stock of the situation, one of them saw Smith allegedly drop a backpack he was carrying into some brush, “which was obviously a concern,” Valdovinos said. The police then arrested the couple and searched them. She allegedly found a small amount of cocaine on one of them.

At that point, officers retrieved the discarded backpack and discovered approximately one kilogram of the drug inside, according to police.

Breit and Smith were subsequently arrested and booked into a county jail in Vista on suspicion of illegally transporting a controlled substance and participating in a criminal conspiracy.

Investigators believe the suspects flew from Phoenix in the rented plane with Breit at the controls, Valdovinos told news crews during an afternoon briefing.