A suspected drug plane, one of two aircrafts originating from South America on Saturday, touched down in a remote area of southern Belize on Sunday morning. The double engine plane landed on an illegal runway approximately six miles away from Crique Sarco Village. Its cargo was discharged and then the aircraft was set on fire. By the time joint B.D.F. and police personnel arrived at the location, they were only able to discover the burnt vestiges of the aircraft.

Chester Williams, Commissioner of Police
"On Saturday night, the police were monitoring two tracks in our airspace and I see where people on social media were saying, "why do they have to take the police from Hopkins to go and respond to plane?" When we do have these events, we have Hopkins Day, we had the music fest in San Pedro. Anytime we have major events, you'll find that we'll deploy our quick response team and our specialized units to assist in policing those events. And so the quick response team from Dangriga was in charge of policing and patrolling Hopkins, due to the Hopkins Day event. When we had the information of the night plane in our airspace, the police officers, the quick response team that was in Hopkins had to leave Hopkins to respond to the plane and that left Hopkins open with no patrol because they were the ones who were patrolling. The team subsequently, along with the BDF team conducted searches in the southern part of the country as information was that one of the planes faded in the Dolores area. They went into the area, they conducted searches and the burnt remains of the plane was found. Search was conducted of the area and so far we have not been able to locate anybody, nor the cargo we believe that came in the plane."



Channel 5