Suspected Drug Plane Crashes into the Sea

A suspected drug plane crashed over the weekend in southern Belize, just off the coast of Placencia and in the vicinity of Moho Caye. Local authorities had been tracking the plane en route from South America on Friday night and there are reports that it was seen flying over Independence. But the plane went down over the water and only the wings and tail of suspected narco plane could be found. Today, authorities were out searching because police believe the aircraft plane, along with its cargo and body of its pilot may still be submerged. So the area is being guarded by heavy police and coast guard presence.

Chester Williams

Chester Williams, Commissioner of Police

“We did what we would normally do in terms of deploying our troops to the different areas that we believe the plane may possibly want to land. And sometime around one a.m. on Saturday morning, the plane entered our airspace and our team, comprising of police and members of the Belize Defence Force were in place at the possible landing spots. Apparently, it wanted to land on the airstrip at Riversdale, but we had a team there and so it could not have landed. The plane went out and disappeared off the radar somewhere east of Placencia village. We were of the belief that the plane had gone to Honduras to land. In the morning of Saturday, we received information from fishermen that they saw the remains of a plane floating about fifteen to twenty miles east of Placencia village, which would be in the Moho Caye area. And based on that, we deployed members of the Belize Police Department and the Coast Guard to the area to search. So far we have found the wings of the plane and the tail, but we have not been able to locate the fuselage and that is the most important part because we still are of the view that the drugs may be in the fuselage as well as the pilots. Since then, we have conducted intensive search of the area, including using the helicopter to do a flyover of the general area, and we have still not been able to locate the fuselage. Our search continues; we have put together an investigative team that will be tasked to look at the entire situation to see if we will be able to get the information that will lead us to the fuselage of that plane.”