Police find boatload of cocaine near Bz. City

Details are in short supply, but what is clear is that last night law enforcement officers made one of the largest drug busts in Belizean history. Around 7:30 a maritime patrol, believed to be acting in co-ordination with a helicopter from the British Frigate HMS Coventry, intercepted a large skiff, allegedly of Colombian origin. The boat headed for Hicks Caye, located between Caye Caulker and Belize City, where its occupants ran the vessel aground and fled into the island’s mangrove. The search for the drug runners was abandoned due to darkness, but the cargo of forty-three bales of suspected cocaine was recovered along with two more bales found floating nearby this morning. A full scale press conference is expected to be held tomorrow, but if the past is any guide, bales of Colombian cocaine usually weigh in at around twenty-five kilos each, meaning that last night’s haul would total around one thousand, one hundred and twenty-five kilos or twenty-five hundred pounds. This would put it in the same range as the two thousand, five hundred and fifty-four pound bust attributed to the Hertular brothers on May ninth, but well below the record of two thousand, nine hundred and ten pounds seized on March twenty-third, 1997 or the two thousand, six hundred and nine pounds confiscated a month and a half later. Those two 1997 operations both involved Colombian skiffs found in Belizean waters. While the latest haul of cocaine tonight sits behind bars under lock and key, the men who brought it here are still at large.