Suspected Drug Plane Lands; Crew Offload Cargo, Destroy and Bury the Aircraft!

A suspected drug plane landed in a remote area between Shipyard and Crooked Tree Village early on Sunday morning.  When police arrived on scene, the crew had already offloaded the cargo, destroyed and buried the aircraft and departed from the area. Today, Commissioner of Police Chester Williams told the press that they had received tracking information on the airplane since it departed South America and was headed in Belize’s direction. According to Williams, they were actively monitoring; they mobilized and deployed their personnel to different possible landing spots.  Williams says that law enforcement authorities arrived at the remote landing spot over an hour after the landing.

Chester Williams

Chester Williams, Commissioner of Police

“This time around the plane entered our air space just around four a.m. on Sunday morning. It flew over and went north and then it went south and disappeared from the radar. A few minutes later around four-thirty we were notified by the Mexican air asset that the plane was sighted on the ground behind Crooked Tree near the Shipyard area which is a very remote area. May I say that we had a possible landing spot that was already lighted for the plane to land and we were in that area waiting but somehow the plane shifted and went and landed in this extremely remote area which is not even an air strip – it actually landed in a farm. Police and B.D.F. personnel responded to the area – it took us some time to get there and upon arrival there was no sight of the plane but we found one excavator, one bulldozer, one tractor. We also observed a huge portion of the soil that appeared to have been freshly disturbed and several debris of what we believe was from a plane. So, we got someone who could operate the equipment and we dug the soil that was disturbed and came across the plane that was destroyed and buried. We took out the engine from the plane and we were able to have the scenes of crime personnel swab the interior of the plane – the results for which is still pending. Searches were conducted within the immediate and outer area of the landing site with a view to see if we would have located the content of the plane, which we believe was drugs, but there was no joy.”