CityNews – Early Monday morning, a Shan man, travelling with upwards of 190,000 yaba pills through the Mae Sai district of Chiang Rai, was caught in a gunfight with local officials, resulting in his death.
Local police in Chiang Rai received a tip earlier in the day that an unknown Shan suspect was carrying large quantities of an unknown amphetamine to a bus station in Mae Sai, a small district outside of Chiang Rai. Police officers were sent to investigate; once they arrived at the station, they found the Shan suspect on a Honda motorbike with a large black bag. The police made a move to search and seize the bag, but before they were able to do so, the suspect opened fire, only to have all of his shots miss. The police returned fire and shot the suspect dead.
Upon search and seizure of the bag, police found the bag to be full of yaba, a highly addictive caffeine pill popular in Thailand. Officials in the area believe this particular bust to be part of a “caravan” of sorts moving downwards from the northern borderlands into central Thailand. This particular drug bust in Chiang Rai follows an earlier bust in the province Saturday night in which six drug traffickers were killed and 840,000 yaba pills were discovered.