25,000 weed plants go up in smoke

It was a bad weekend for weed farmers as on Sunday police raided a major plantation in the Orange Walk District. When the last tree was chopped, the tally totalled over twenty-five thousand plants, located near the village of Gallon Jug. Four men were sighted in the area, but three managed to escape. The one who didn’t, fifty-eight year old Manuel Hernandez, was caught with a twenty-gauge shotgun, four shells and a pen gun, not to mention sixteen pounds of processed marijuana. Hernandez has been charged with one count of drug trafficking, two counts of cultivation of cannabis and three counts of unlicensed firearm and ammunition.

In related news, police found a bale of marijuana, weighing in at one hundred and ten pounds, floating in the sea north of Ambergris Caye. They also discovered the burning carcass of an airplane less then half a mile south of Santa Cruz Lodge in the Corozal District. The small plane, which bore no markings, was near a cane feeder road. Thirteen containers of suspected aviation fuel were found nearby, as well as expended ammunition of nine and seven point six-two millimetre calibre.