Aidan Sagala was just 21 when he died in his sister’s arms, and his death would ultimately unravel a massive drug smuggling ring with networks in India, the US and Canada
After a long day at work, Aiden Sagala decided to crack open a cold beer to relax – but that decision would prove to be fatal. What 21-year-old Aidan didn’t know was that his can had been filled with liquid methamphetamine, and that just one sip would kill him.
The horrific event took place on March 2, 2023, when Aiden grabbed a can from a case of beer that had been gifted to him by his boss, which he brought back home.
At the time, he was living with his sister Angela, and brother-in-law, Billy, in Auckland, New Zealand. Cp24 reports that Aiden and Billy were lounging at home with a friend when they decided to have some of the tall cans labelled as ‘Honey Bear Beer’ from Canada.
But Billy said after Aidan took his first gulp, he asked him if the beer tasted ‘salty’.
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Billy told him that his beer tasted fine, so Aiden asked him to try his. “I went to have a taste to see what he meant. So I only took a sip, but I spat that out real fast… it tasted like sea salt with chemicals. I told him I didn’t fully swallow.”
According to Billy, Aiden then went to phone his mom – and things started to spiral with Aiden coming out of his room minutes later and telling his brother-in-law he thought he was about to die.
He became increasingly agitated and physically aggressive. “He was screaming out, ‘I want my mom, I want my mom. I’m dying, I want mom. I’m dying, I want mom,'” Billy recalled. All the while, Aiden’s mum listened helplessly on the end of the phone.
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In a panic, Billy called his wife Angela, who rushed home to try to help her brother. When Aidan’s face started to turn blue she called an ambulance. But it took an hour for paramedics to arrive and, in the meantime, Angela – a doctor herself – began performing CPR on her little brother.
Tragically, Aiden fell into a coma and died five days later. His cause of death was recorded as multiple organ failure from a lethal dose of methamphetamine.
Aidan’s untimely death would ultimately unravel a massive drug smuggling ring with networks in India, the United States and Canada.
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Once New Zealand police began investigating Aiden’s death, their case led them to a storage unit in Auckland. They conducted a raid and discovered around 700 kilograms of liquid methamphetamine. It was the single biggest methamphetamine seizure in the country’s history.
Police say Baltej Singh, the owner of a local supermarket, had imported large amounts of meth disguised as beverages into New Zealand. They included shipments of kombucha from the US, coconut water from India and nearly 29,000 cans of the Honey Bear beer from Toronto.
Aiden’s boss, a man named Himatjit ‘Jimmy’ Kahlon, was captured on security camera removing cases of beer from the unit. He was accused of helping process the liquid methamphetamine into crystal meth.
Kahlon was then giving away the excess cans that actually contained beer, accidentally leaving some cans that were still full of liquid methamphetamine in the cases. He was later charged with manslaughter in Aiden’s death.
Police also charged Singh, who’s a respected businessman in Auckland and comes from a prominent family in India, for running the import operation.