And so while that is the current status of the school and the students who ingested the edibles, we now have an update on the investigation into where the edible came from. Last night, 7News broke the story that the edibles started out in the police evidence room. Turns out the evidence keeper couldn't stand the high scent they gave off and he took the decision to dump some 230 packets of edibles. He took them to the dump, and that is where scavengers who comb the dump for valuables, found them and sold them.
An intensive investigation is being conducted into all that went wrong to have these edibles end up for sale in front of a primary school in Lake Independence.
The Commissioner of Police was apparently too busy with this investigation today to grant the media an interview, but, his Minister, Kareem Musa did so from Placencia where he was charing a regional security meeting.
Musa held a Zoom press conference to give an overview of the chain of custody - and where it all went wrong. He says police got the edibles from customs:
Kareem Musa, Minister of Home Affairs
"Is an issue that originated as I understand it with the customs department who turned over the suspected cannabis at the point of entry. It was classified as suspected cannabis edibles, turned it over to the anti-narcotics unit thereafter turned it over to the exhibit keeper. While it was that the edibles were being tested at the forensic lab, that particular test had not returned as yet and as I understand it, the civilian exhibit keeper, because I know we are saying it was a police exhibit keeper, but it's actually a civilian employed by the Belize Police Department took the decision of discarding the product that was confiscated by the customs department and as I understand it, he is saying to the police that he discarded it, because of the scent that it was giving off within the exhibit room and so, again very tragic and unforeseeable change of events that then transpired after that, because as I understand it he discarded it at the dump on the Western Highway at which point individuals who were at the dump site found the discarded material and thereafter took it to the children and sold it to the children at the school and like the rest of Belize you would imagine that like myself as minister, we had extreme concern, because there is no telling what could possibly had been inside these edibles."
