Sto­ry by MARK BAS­SANT & RHON­DOR DOWLAT-ROS­TANT

Coast Guard of­fi­cers re­cov­ered sev­en bags con­tain­ing mar­i­jua­na and drugs that were thrown over­board a ves­sel of which they were in pur­suit in the Gulf of Paria, on Wednes­day night.

The oc­cu­pants of the ves­sel man­aged to es­cape by cross­ing over the bor­der in Venezuela.

Ac­cord­ing to a re­port, at about 9:05 pm, Coast Guard Of­fi­cers were on ma­rine pa­trol in In­ter­cep­tor 019 un­der the stew­ard­ship of Pet­ty Of­fi­cer Bur­roughs in Ica­cos, Gulf of Paria, when Bur­roughs ob­served a ves­sel pro­ceed­ing in a south to north di­rec­tion. This aroused his sus­pi­cion, and he be­gan pro­ceed­ing to­wards the ves­sel.

Re­ports are the said ves­sel then al­tered its course, in­creas­ing its speed, caus­ing Bur­roughs to al­so in­crease the speed of the Coast Guard In­ter­cep­tor. Whilst this chase in­ten­si­fied, the oc­cu­pants of the un­known ves­sel be­gan throw­ing over­board items re­sem­bling bags. The ves­sel con­tin­ued un­til it crossed over the Bor­der in­to Venezue­lan wa­ters.

At 9:36 pm, In­ter­cep­tor 019 came along­side the float­ing items, which to­talled sev­en bags.

Hav­ing re­trieved the bags from the wa­ter, Bur­roughs made con­tact with CG28 and they met at 10:01 pm where Pet­ty Of­fi­cer Bur­roughs hand­ed over the sev­en bags to Lieu­tenant Mo­hip, the Cap­tain of ves­sel CG28 and Lieu­tenant Di­az Op­er­a­tions of­fi­cer.

Both ves­sels sub­se­quent­ly re­turned to Staubles Bay.

The T&T Coast Guard made com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice and as a re­sult, Supt Smith, In­sp Ra­moutar and PC Joseph of the St James CID pro­ceed­ed to Staubles Bay where they met PC Durgam and WPC Dox­il­ly from the Port of Spain CID, who processed and pho­tographed the sev­en bags con­tain­ing 146 pack­ets of mar­i­jua­na weigh­ing 102.1kg and 75 pack­ets of co­caine weigh­ing 82.7 kgs. 

No one was ar­rest­ed.

In­ves­ti­ga­tions are on­go­ing.