Tonight, the search continues for an estimated two thousand pounds of cocaine that landed in the Belize district on a Sabreliner drug jet early on Tuesday morning.
The plane had a rough landing on a picado road behind Crooked Tree - snapping the landing gear, as it crashed to earth nose first. But, today, Commissioner of Police Chester Williams disclosed that the narcos were very prepared - so much so that they put tacks on the road to give the responding police vehicle flat tires. Sounds like a move script - but the Compol says it's real:
Chester Williams - Commissioner of Police
"The issue with these narco planes is surely a plaque to us. We have done a lot recently to deter these planes from landing within our borders and as we have said before as much as the number that we normally monitor on a nightly basis. We are able to deter many of them from landing, but one of the track came and flew over Belize and the other one manoeuvre several time and in several areas as if it was trying to find a place to land and it disappeared off the radar, so we lost communications or sight of it even on the radar and then when it did appear again, is because we are told that it had landed in the fire burn area I think, that's somewhere behind Carmelita Village in Orange Walk District
"I must say that we had a team in that area at Carmelita and that team quickly made their way to location, but while they were doing so, apparently had placed spikes on the road and the spikes caused damage to all the tires for the vehicle, so that disabled the team from reaching the location in a timely manner and by the time another vehicle came to assist and get the officers to the location, the plane was found without its cargo."
Jules Vasquez
"It has a known payload of 1,700 pounds. They usually put like 200-300 more, so we can safely estimate about 2,000 pounds were in that plane. It is a challenge to move that volume of drugs across the border. We know it's usually heading north. Do you all believe those close to 2,000 pounds of drugs are still in that general area?"
Chester Williams - Commissioner of Police
"We don't believe it is still in the general area and I think it took our team like 3 hours to get to the plane after the team experience the spikes. 3 hours would have been quite reasonable if they had adequate vehicular resources to move the cargo from point A to point B and you would know that there is a river nearby and certainly, they would not move it by road, but by the river and that river that is there runs all the way to Botes Mexico."
Reporter
"Do you believe that the narco traffickers are still in the area?"
Chester Williams - Commissioner of Police
"We believe the narco traffickers are within that Carmelita area. There are a couple of them who operates out of Carmelita, we know who they are and those are the persons we are looking for. As a matter of fact we had gone to their homes yesterday as I had directed the team to make sure we go to their homes yesterday morning to see if they were there and they were not at home, so that again says something that they could be involved and are still out in the fields dealing with the cargo."
