A private plane carrying 860 pounds of cocaine worth nearly $ 4.9 million crashed on a Mexican highway on Sunday, sending drug traffickers fleeing into the woods to dodge police, according to a report.
The Hawker 700, which Mexican authorities said they tracked from Venezuela, crashed with its illicit cargo on a state highway Sunday morning in Quintana Roo, on the Yucatan peninsula, the Mexican News Daily reported.
The video of the burning remains published on Twitter by Alberto Capella, the province’s security minister, shows the smoke coming from the downed plane on the empty highway.
The crew fled into the forest before the military arrived at the scene shortly before 8 a.m., but authorities said they recovered the nearby drugs when they stopped a truck that had been loaded with the plane’s cargo.
Air Force officials told the Mexican newspaper Millenio, which originally reported on the accident, that they began tracking the plane at 5 a.m. after it took off from Maracaibo, Venezuela.
They said that a Texan T-6C military plane was dispatched to intercept the narco plane and ordered it to land before making a forced landing on the highway.
Authorities said this is not the first time that drug traffickers in the region have been frustrated: two planes with weapons and cocaine were seized on consecutive days in January.
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