A man has been charged in Austin County, Texas, after a multi-agency narcotics investigation ended with a traffic stop near Sealy and the seizure of 2.5 kilograms of the pink drug mixture known as "tusi" or "pink cocaine," along with crystal methamphetamine, MDMA and cocaine, the Austin County Sheriff's Office has reported.

Source: KWHI, reporting the Austin County Sheriff's Office

Alexander Amaya Palta was charged by the Austin County District Attorney's Office with possession with intent to distribute, according to the sheriff's office. The charge is an allegation: Amaya Palta is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty in court, and the sheriff's office account describes him as a believed member of the distribution organisation under investigation — a claim investigators will have to prove.

An investigation spanning Houston and Austin County

The sheriff's office said members of the Westside Narcotics Task Force and the Houston Police Department had been conducting a joint investigation into an organisation distributing methamphetamine and 2C-B in the Houston and Austin County areas. Austin County sits directly west of the Houston metro along Interstate 10, and Sealy — where the stop took place — is one of the county's main highway towns on that corridor.

On Thursday, November 12, the task force ran a surveillance operation and identified a blue 2026 Toyota Camry driven by Amaya Palta, whom investigators believed to be a member of the organisation. A sheriff's deputy then conducted a traffic stop on Amaya Palta in the Sealy area, and a search of the vehicle led to the seizures, the sheriff's office said.

What is 'tusi' — and why Texas agencies are watching for it

The sheriff's office described the 2.5 kilograms seized as 2C-B in the form of a pink-coloured mixture of ketamine and cocaine, commonly referred to as tusi, also known on the street as "pink cocaine." Despite the name, the mixture's contents vary: drug agencies stress that tusi is not a single fixed substance but a cocktail whose ingredients can differ from batch to batch.

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration's Houston Division has previously reported an increased presence of pink cocaine in Texas, including in Harris County — the Houston county next door to this investigation's Austin County end — and in Travis County, home to Austin. DEA Assistant Special Agent Brian Cole has warned that because tusi is a mixture of several substances and every batch is different, a user cannot know what they are taking from one batch to the next, in reporting by KXAN.

Source: KXAN reporting on DEA Houston Division statements, via NewsLocker

The charge and what happens next

Amaya Palta was charged with possession with intent to distribute by the Austin County District Attorney's Office. The sheriff's office has not, in the reporting reviewed for this story, published a bond amount, a court date, or the names of any other suspects, and the wider investigation into the distribution organisation the task force described remains a matter for investigators and the courts.

For readers along the Interstate 10 corridor — one of the busiest freight routes in the southern United States, running from Houston through Sealy and on to San Antonio — the case is a reminder that the highway towns west of Houston sit on a route that narcotics task forces actively work. Nothing in the sheriff's account connects this stop to commercial trucking; the vehicle stopped was a passenger car, a 2026 Toyota Camry.

Sources: KWHI (November 14, 2026), reporting the Austin County Sheriff's Office account of the Westside Narcotics Task Force and Houston Police Department investigation, the Sealy-area stop and the seizures; KXAN reporting of DEA Houston Division statements on the presence of tusi in Harris and Travis counties, for background on the drug mixture.