Drug Plane lands on highway with million dollars worth of suspected cocaine
Corruption in the ranks of the police, that’s an allegation that has been around from time immemorial but the stench of corruption hit eerily close to home this past Saturday when a sophisticated drug operation was busted in the south. Four police officers, including the driver assigned of the governor general, and a custom officer have been arrested. We’ll have more on the arrests later in the newscast but first, the bust came after a twin engine Beechcraft landed and sat on the Southern Highway for hours last Saturday morning. Later in the day police found in the vicinity, bales of cocaine containing an estimated two point six tons of the drug. If you do the math, at an estimated seventeen point three thousand US dollars per pound, the value of the bust is in the range of a whopping one hundred and forty million Belize dollars, using the US custom valuation. It is still early in the investigation, so the pilot of the plane, the local kingpins and the cartel to which the shipment is linked, have not been revealed. The plane has been pulled off the highway but sits on the roadside. We begin our coverage of this developing story with a report from News Five Jose Sanchez and Cameraman Christopher Mangar. They captured the spectacle by air with the assistance of an Astrum helicopter piloted by Gustavo Giron Sr. Here’s that report.
Jose Sanchez, Reporting
Residents in villages on the outskirts of Punta Gorda reported hearing an aircraft flying low over the roofs of their homes close to two o’clock on Saturday morning. That was when the Independence Police Formation received information that a suspected drug plane landed near the Bladen Reserve. At mile fifty-seven on the Southern Highway, the wings of the white plane stretched across the highway. The white twin engine aircraft with black and red pinstripes with registration numbers N786B is a Beechcraft Super King Air 200. By five the morning, it was being guarded by police and Belize Defense Force personnel.
Since the road was blocked, a caravan of vehicles began to grow at the north end of the checkpoint. People left their vehicles and brought out babies as well as cameras to see the fairly large plane just sitting surreal in the middle of the highway. And they had reason to awe because the plane is much larger than those used for domestic flights in the country and it would have also taken a highly skilled pilot to land on the Southern Highway.
While some soldiers combed the ground for clues, the B.D.F. Defender flew overhead and also scoured the terrain for evidence of the cargo. Eventually, the Defender landed a half mile away along the same stretch of highway at mile fifty-eight.
As you look to the left of the Bladen Nature Reserve Sign you can see the B.D.F. Defender parked on the highway, at the same spot the drug plane made its descent on the highway before coming to a halt a half mile away. A closer inspection of the scene reveals several lights on the highway that were used to identify the end of the plane’s runway, because the road would turn into a curve at a bridge if the plane went any further.
The runway lights were made with an Atlas brand car battery which was wired to the left and also to the right of the highway with three lights each attached to two pieces of board.
Two gallon bottles are visible to the rear of the plane and many more were strewn off the highway on the left of the plane. And a few miles south of the plane, between miles fifty nine and sixty, a cargo truck with flat tires was being guarded by the police. The truck is believed to have carried the fuel to the plane. The truck had twenty three seventeen gallons plastic containers, three tanks with about five hundred gallons of aviation fuel along with three fuel pumps, and twelve pine logs extracted from the area.
Although trees were cut to clear the landing, the plane did receive minor damage when the wings clipped a pine tree, hence the reason why the pilot couldn’t take off. After three thirty p.m., the plane was towed a half mile away and parked off the highway to allow the flow of traffic which was backed up since early Saturday morning. And after additional searches, at five in the afternoon, near a saw mill, eighty bales of suspected cocaine and seventeen loose packs of the suspected drug found by the police. Reporting for News Five, Jose Sanchez.
The packages had the scorpion stamp, which indicates the drug originated from Colombia.
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