7 News Belize

"Di Plane (Crash) Lan'!"
posted (November 25, 2011)
This morning around 9:00, the news went out in waves that a drug plane had crashed in the Belize District and two men were dead inside.

It happened behind the Belize Zoo, not far from La Democracia - in a very accessible area, on solid land, about a thousand feet from a much-used road.

And while it was news, scores of Belize District residents along the coast and up the central corridor knew something was up - because from 8:00 last night, a single engine plane was heard droning around at low altitude - either looking for some place to land, or to make a drop off. Police blanketed the Mahogany Heights area last night where it was last heard at 10:00 pm. They didn't find anything, and only daybreak revealed what had happened.

7 news was on the scene - and Jules Vasquez fills in the blanks:..

Jules Vasquez reporting
Police had the area blocked off but we snuck in and saw the anti-drug unit blanketing the area while regular police elements and the scenes of crime team went in for a closer look. We snuck a little closer and show hordes of police at the crash site and some distance away.

From a distance the wreckage of the plane looked like some kind of vertical structure in the middle of the bush. A closer look with magnified zoom showed police amidst the wreckage searching for clues. Soon enough though, we saw an ADU team coming our way and sure enough they wanted us gone.

ADU Officer
"The scene is in process right now so you have to go wait at the gate."

That gate is really the gate for a private property - where the media was held. About half hour later, police brought out the mangled bodies - we warn you it is not a pretty sight. The men are two Colombians - who died from the impact of the plane crash.

We spoke to the man who first found them at 6:47 am:

Jules Vasquez
"What did you see this morning."

Voice of man who found the plane
"This morning I went to work on my ATV and while going to check my cameras I saw a white house at the edge of the savannah, but when I got close it wasn't a house, it was a plane mash up, so I stop mu ATV and look at it. I see a person in the water with his head down and his butt was up. The plane engine was out, the front of the plane was mash-up. I turn back and told Mr. Richard who live around the area and he called the police immediately after that."

Jules Vasquez
"There was more than one person on the plane as it turns out. But you only saw on out?"

Voice of man who found the plane
"I only see one person outside of the plane. I never went that close to see because it's a crime scene and I don't want to be involve and I didn't know who was around there and I didn't know what it was all about, so I just turned back and told Richard that I went to check my camera and that there is a plane back there."

"He told me that he heard it last night, it almost flew over his house but he never hear where it went."

It didn't go far; police let us into the area around noon and we saw that the plane, a Cessna Centurion II, single engine crashed about a thousand feet behind that house.

Here's what happened: the plane was headed east, in the direction of Belize City when the left wing clipped this tree - cut off the entre top of the trie and then plunged into the pine ridge terrain.

After that, the plane literally disintegrated: the gnarled propeller ground into the earth - and five feet from that the wing-tip.

The theory is that after nose diving into the ground, the plane flipped - possibly even cart wheeled and ended up here in the bush - facing west, the opposite direction.

What's left of the wings is stained with the color from the grass the engine is almost literally disengaged from the front of the plane. The fuselage was twisted around, but inside the cabin we saw six seats - which is not standard for a drug running plane - which is not standard for a plane that transports drugs which has to have maximum cargo space.

That suggests to police that it may have been bringing a person or possibly money - but likely not drugs.

But what caused it to crash? Was it a mechanical or navigational error?

An investigation would have to point to that, but the Cessna had been heard flying low over the Belize district for two hours - with only a beacon light.

This is an area of higher elevation so the pilot may have miscalculated the terrain.

The abundance of aviation fuel in the deep gouges left by the plane as it flipped through the area suggest that it did not run out of fuel.

But looking at the lay of the area - it appears that there were a few hundred feet of clear hard pine ridge land just before the tree that the pilot crashed into, and if he had landed there it might have been the story of the plane everyone heard, but no one saw:

Voice of man who found the plane
"It land too close to the high ridge and that's where it ended up, but if was more in the clearance they would have survive I believe."

But in that case, with the cargo suspected to be somehow illicit, that it crashed may have been the best possible outcome for Belize law enforcement which has no aerial patrol presence or capability.

Now, investigators have to sift through clues, a bar of soap, the Mexican flag on the plane's mangled nose and most importantly what caused the pilot to clip this tree at 10pm.

This accident obviously draws immediate comparisons to the one involving a Mexican plane that landed on a cane road behind Guinea Grass in June.

That one also had a Mexican Flag on it and that also was a six-seater, and again, all the seats were intact - not consistent with a plane used for drug transshipment.

In that crash though, no one appears to have died, since the plane simply skidded off the wet road it was landing on. So, what was up with this plane? Well, one theory says that it did safely land - but that happened about 15 miles in on the Coastal Highway. At that point it is believed to have dropped off or picked up whatever was its cargo - and then it crashed on its way back out of Belizean territory.

Again that is just a theory and does not explain why the plane was flying so extraordinarily law west of The Belize Zoo. The two men inside, as we noted, are Colombian. Late information is that their names are Colonel Miguel Rodriguez and Hector Salcedes.

The Plane is Mexican registered.

Home | Archives | Downloads/Podcasts | Advertise | Contact Us

7 News Belize