Police Pick Up 31 Pounds of Marijuana and a Firearm in Hattieville

Juanito Cocom

In Hattieville over the weekend, Rural Eastern Division police made a major seizure of drugs and a firearm. Two persons, including a minor, were arrested and charged and police have reason to believe the adult was a courier for an operation in the West. We get more from ASP Juanito Cocom of Ladyville Police.

ASP Juanito Cocom, Officer in Charge, Ladyville Police

“[At] nine-thirty-five on Sunday, twenty-third October, Hattieville police on a vehicle checkpoint at mile fifteen on the George Price Highway, stopped a red Geo Prism vehicle driven at the time by Angel Vidal, thirty years, Belizean taxi driver of Centro America Street, Benque Viejo. At the time he was accompanied by a minor. Searches on luggage in the trunk of the vehicle revealed sixteen parcels of suspected cannabis, amounting to fourteen point eight-seven-zero kilos. Both persons were arrested and charged with drug trafficking. They were arraigned today at Magistrate’s Court in Belize City, where Vidal [pleaded] guilty. He was fined ten thousand dollars to be paid by October twenty-fourth, 2017, in default three years’ imprisonment. The vehicle was forfeited as well and the charges against the minor were withdrawn. Sunday, twenty-third October at about eight-thirty p.m., Hattieville relief personnel confiscated a sawed-off shotgun at a yard in America Street, Hattieville village. Presently an investigation is being carried out, as there is information of who might have placed that firearm there. If there is no evidence to link the person to the firearm, it will be deposited as found property.”