25.6 C
Belize City
Tuesday, March 19, 2024

Belize places Top 40 at Miss World 2023

Photo: Elise-Gayonne Vernon, Belizean contestant by Kristen Ku BELIZE...

PM presents 2024/2025 Budget

Photo: Prime Minister, Hon. John Briceño  The national...

Women in Art

by Charles Gladden BELIZE CITY, Thurs. Mar. 14,...

Drug plane, bound for Belize, crashes in Chetumal

HeadlineDrug plane, bound for Belize, crashes in Chetumal

CHUNOX, Corozal District, Mon. July 6, 2020– On Saturday night, a suspected drug plane that was being tracked from South America and appeared to be headed toward Belize’s airspace, made police scramble and deploy to a likely area where they believed it would land, and on their arrival at Chunox, they saw a road that was lighted with lanterns — in order to make it function as a runway.

Commissioner of Police Chester Williams said that police took up a position and awaited the landing of the plane on the road, but the plane appeared, then circled the area, but it did not land.

The plane then went across to an area in a nearby Mexican town, where it crash-landed, and not long after it burst into flames.

Mexican law enforcement officers, however, were able to recover some of the cocaine cargo from out of the plane that caught fire when it landed. They said that the crew was nowhere to be found.

Commissioner Williams said that someone must have seen the Belize police in the area and alerted those involved in the landing of the plane, who warned the pilot not to land there, making him crash-land in the neighboring area of Mexico instead.

Williams said that it was the quick deployment of the police in the area that caused the plane to change its course.

In an article today in Linea De Fuego, a leading online Mexican newspaper, it was reported that the comprehensive air surveillance system of the state detected the drug plane coming from South America, and began to track it, and a helicopter unit and law enforcement officers were deployed when the plane entered into Mexican airspace.

The plane landed in Polyuc, in Carrillo Puerto, Mexico. When police arrived, the plane was already burning. The report did not indicate whether the plane had been set on fire, or whether the fire was the result of the crash.

The helicopter unit saw a pickup driving away from the area on the Jose Maria Morelos highway.

Mexican police quickly intercepted the pickup and found 13 packs of cocaine weighing 390 kilos, believed to be a part of the cargo from the drug plane.

The plane, the pickup and the cocaine have been confiscated by police, who did not say what happened to the traffickers in the pickup.

Linea De Fuego estimated the value of the drug found on the plane to be $109,151,250 pesos, or about $13,643,906 Belize dollars.

Check out our other content

Belize places Top 40 at Miss World 2023

PM presents 2024/2025 Budget

Women in Art

Check out other tags:

International