A court in Vietnam gave the death penalty to a local teacher convicted of drug trafficking on Tuesday.

The man, Vu Ba Xenh, was a school teacher at the time of his arrest in his residential area in Nghe An Province, which borders Laos.

In mid-June 2018, Xenh got acquainted with a person living in Laos who promised to pay him US$200 each time the teacher managed to transport drugs, after realizing that he knew Nghe An like the back of his hand, court records said.

Xenh, 40, accepted the offer and left his phone number for contact.

Later in the same month, Xenh came to a designated meeting spot in Vietnam and received a gun from a group of people who had crossed the border forest at night, the court said.

While Xenh and the group were moving drugs to another place, they were intercepted by Vietnamese police.

Xenh was subdued but the group fled into a jungle after firing several shots at the officers.

Two policemen were injured, one of whom is now confined to a wheelchair as one of the bullets ended up lodged in his spine.

The authorities said they seized a home-made gun, 20 heroin packages, seven kilograms of meth and 12,000 tablets of synthetic drugs.

Xenh alone carried nearly 15 kilograms of drugs, they said.

It is unclear what type of drug was mentioned but in Vietnam trading over 100 grams of heroin, meth, cocaine, amphetamine or MDMA (ecstasy) is punishable with up to 20 years’ imprisonment, life imprisonment or capital punishment.

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