Police noticed that a pickup made a turn into a secondary road instead of driving towards a drug checkpoint in Lampang’s Mae Prik district.
Officers at the checkpoint went after the pickup and signalled for it to stop, but it sped off prompting an officer to fire at one of its tyres.
One of the passengers was then seen throwing out two bags. The pickup continued until it reached the Mae Prik highway office, where three suspects abandoned the vehicle and fled into the forest.
Police found 288,000 meth pills in the pickup and more drugs in the two bags dropped earlier, making a total of 480,000 pills seized.