Incredible footage shows the moment a member of the US Coast Guard jumped on top of a suspected drug smuggling submarine in a high speed chase.
Members from the Coast Guard Cutter Munro chased the ‘self-propelled semi-submersible suspected drug smuggling vessel,’ AKA a narco submarine, across the Eastern Pacific Ocean on June 18.
The dramatic footage has been released by the Defense Department, courtesy of the US Coast Guard Pacific Area, to show how such vessels are used by drug smugglers to evade detection by law enforcement authorities.
Take a look at the moment the Coast Guard jumps on board below:
The video shows the crew of the Munro chasing after the submarine, with one of the men shouting and ordering the vessel to stop in Spanish. The man then turns to his fellow crew members and states, as per Business Insider: ‘That’s going to be hard to get on’.
The difficulty of the situation doesn’t stop the men though, as one of the guards leaps from his moving boat onto the speeding narco sub when it fails to stop, and starts banging on the hatch.
The video then ends on somewhat of a cliffhanger, with someone from the suspected drug smuggling submarine opening the hatch and emerging with their hands in the air.
As per 9News, the narco submarine was homemade and measured approximately 12 metres in length.
The vessel is reported to have been carrying nearly eight tonnes of cocaine to be smuggled via the Pacific Ocean into the US.
This dramatic interaction is just one of 14 similar drug busts that the Munro and two other Coast Guard cutters pulled off between May and July this year along the coasts of Mexico and Central and South America, according to a July 11 statement from the US Coast Guard Pacific Area.
Yesterday (July 11), the US Coast Guard ‘offloaded more than 39,000 pounds of cocaine and 933 pounds of marijuana worth a combined estimate of $569 million,’ according to a press release.
Vice President Mike Pence attended an event in San Diego, California, commending the team for their ‘new deployment to the Eastern Pacific corridor’.
Pence continued:
Even though this is a new area of deployment for this cutter, you’ve already proven yourselves more than up to the task… fourteen operations went into this offload, and one of them was of a self-propelled, semi-submersible vessel (SPPS), which resulted in the largest Coast Guard removal in four years.
The Coast Guard is seizing illegal drugs at a faster rate than ever before. And you all have been at the tip of the spear, making that happen.
The Munro’s efforts are part of a larger push to combat drug trafficking in and around Central and South America.
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A Broadcast Journalism Masters graduate who went on to achieve an NCTJ level 3 Diploma in Journalism, Lucy has done stints at ITV, BBC Inside Out and Key 103. While working as a journalist for UNILAD, Lucy has reported on breaking news stories while also writing features about mental health, cervical screening awareness, and Little Mix (who she is unapologetically obsessed with).