School bus driver, attendant held over drugs worth 1 billion baht

Thai police have nabbed a school bus driver and his bus attendant after they were found transporting drugs worth about one billion baht, hidden in a school bus that was taking students on a field trip to a science park in Phetchaburi province.

Police found the hidden 184kg of crystal methamphetamine and 2.9 million methamphetamine pills when the bus was stopped on a highway after a tip-off, reports the Bangkok Post.

Provincial Police Region 7 deputy commissioner Police Major General Udon Yomcharoen said that the tip-off led police to arrest the 53-year-old driver, and the 20-year-old bus attendant at Tha Yang intersection on Phetkasem Highway in Tha Yang district about 8pm on Thursday.

He estimated the confiscated narcotics were worth at least one billion baht.

Upon inspection of the luggage compartment of the bus, police found about 30 sacks containing the speed pills and crystal meth, commonly known as ice.

The suspects told police that a southern school had chartered the bus, registered in Songkhla province, to take students to the King Mongkut Memorial Park of Science and Technology in Prachuap Khiri Khan.

The suspects also said they were hired by a 40-year-old man from Songkhla, known only as Kwang, to pick up the drugs from a black pickup parked near a temple in Ratchaburi’s Pak Tho district.

While the students were at the park, the two men drove the bus to Pak Tho to pick up the sacks from a man who allegedly paid them 100,000 baht to deliver the drugs to Phatthalung province before they headed back to the park to pick up the students.

As they headed south to Prachuap Khiri Khan, the bus was stopped and searched in Phetchaburi and the two men were arrested.