Emirati died of overdose hours before car plunged from Al Ain mountain

Body of 23-year-old Emirati was found in car that plunged from Jabel Hafeet in Al Ain earlier this month.

N B, a 23-year-old Emirati, was found dead in a car that fell from the second rest area on Jebel Hafeet in Al Ain this month. Courtesy Al Ittihad

An Emirati man found dead in a car that plunged off a mountain had died of a drug overdose hours before, police say.

The body of N?B, 23, was found in a car that fell from the second rest area on Jebel Hafeet in Al Ain this month. It was initially believed he had died in the accident but a medical examination found he had died several hours earlier after he had been injected with heroin.

An Emirati man, 27, and an African man, 26, who were with him when he died, have been arrested.

All three were using hard drugs, police say, and one of the two allegedly injected the deceased with the lethal dose of heroin.

“All three were inside the car when, at a traffic junction in Al Ain city, the two suspects in the front seats suddenly saw their friend lunge forward between them,” police said. “The first suspect then used a razor blade to make incisions on the victim’s fingers to release blood and reduce the dose of the drug in the victim’s system.”

Police said the two suspects carried their unconscious friend to a hotel in the city where all three spent the night.

The next morning, after discovering their friend had died, one suspect asked the other to leave his car outside the home of the deceased man’s family with the dead man inside, police said.

He then decided instead to roll the car off Jebel Hafeet and make it look like his friend had died in an accident.

Maj Gen Mohammed Al Menhali, director general of operations at Abu Dhabi Police, urged addicts to seek treatment at government rehabilitation centres.