Container of medicine jacked on Coastal Road
Tonight Customs and police authorities have joined forces in investigating another hijacked shipment of goods destined for Guatemala.
Comptroller of Customs, Gregory Gibson, and Officer Commanding the CIB Eastern Division, Assistant Superintendent Julio Valdez, confirmed this evening to News Five that the goods labeled as “cough suppressants” arrived from Panama earlier this week. The shipment was cleared from the Taca warehouse on Central American Boulevard in Belize City around noon on Wednesday en route to its destination, Guatemala. And while Gibson would not release the names of those involved, he did say that the container never made it to Guatemala. Gibson reports that when the customs guard and the trucker reached mile forty-two on the Western Highway, two vehicles blocked them on the road. The men made a report to the Customs hours later around four o’clock on Wednesday afternoon claiming that four robbers, wielding guns and speaking in English held them up and commandeered the truck with the one hundred and forty-six packages of the presumed medicine. According to the report, two of the jackers held the trucker and custom guard hostage while the other two took off in the loaded truck. Eventually they were taken to the Rockville area where they were left on their own. The victims said they then hitched a ride to Belize City. At news time, police and customs officials are still looking for the missing truck and are also now trying to verify the cargo. Police are not treating the customs officer or the trucker as suspects but they are currently interviewing the Belize City agent to whom the goods were consigned.
Viewers will recall that only two months ago another mysterious jacking of a container was reported and a Customs officer was suspended after the forty-foot container truck left the Belize City Port en route to Dangriga but never arrived. That container was ironically invoiced as – you guessed it, “Medicine” and vitamins and bound for Dangriga. The hijackers used the Coastal road to commit that crime and the empty container was eventually discovered on George Price Boulevard in Belmopan. In a third incident a shipment bound for Cancun consigned to a Mexican businessman and invoiced as “spices” also mysteriously disappeared on the highways. At present, Gibson says his department is baffled at the repeat incidents of medicine containers gone missing.
