Harper Praises Crews Courage as hijacking ends without injury
A CanJet plane which was been hijacked by a gunman sits on the tarmac of the
Sangster International Airport in Montego Bay early Monday. A lone gunman held the
crew of a Canadian plane hostage after seizing the jet with nearly 180 passengers on
board following its landing in Jamaica. Photograph by: Pat Roxborough-Wright, AFP/Getty ImagesMONTEGO BAY, Jamaica -- Suzanne Ferguson believed she was about to die in her own 9/11 nightmare -- just 10 days before her wedding.
When Ms. Ferguson first saw Stephen Fray waving a gun around as he stormed her airliner Sunday night, the horror of the Twin Towers flashed through her mind.
“I thought he wanted to crash the plane like in New York. That’s what we were all thinking. He wasn’t going to shoot us all. He only had a small gun.”
This time, a set of heroics in the same spirit that the world witnessed on Sept. 11, 2001 -- a brave and cunning Canadian flight crew and a ruthlessly precise squad of elite Jamaican commandoes -- turned out to be enough to save the day as Canada’s hijack drama in Jamaica had a happy ending for everybody, including Mr. Fray, who was captured alive.
But not before the deeply troubled young man paralyzed a major Caribbean airport, sowing chaos and fear inside the passenger cabin of CanJet Flight 918 and across two countries, when he demanded to be flown to Cuba to escape his Jamaican home and the demons in his own mind.
“Today is a day to be truly joyful,” said Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who arrived in Jamaica two hours before the hijacking for a working visit. “We had every reason to believe from the beginning that this was not politically motivated; simply a random act.”
The first link in the chain of not-so-random events that led to the hijacking was forged one year ago when the first sign of Mr. Fray’s mental illness surfaced.
Mr. Fray grew up a good kid, Janet Silvera, a reporter with a local newspaper, told Canwest News Service, and was friends with her own son. Mr. Fray’s father was a successful businessman.
“He went to school with my son,” said Silvera, 43. “This is a decent young man, who is having a period of depression.”
Mr. Fray’s behaviour changed a year ago as friends noticed he was becoming more withdrawn, a condition that deepened with some bizarre behavior three months ago, she said.
But at 10:20 p.m. Monday night, wearing an official looking badge and a stripped shirt that suggested a uniform, Mr. Fray managed to breeze through security at Sangster International Airport with a loaded gun. He walked straight onto the parked Canjet plane, which had just arrived in Montego Bay from Halifax and was about to carry on to Havana, Cuba, where at least two of the four separate wedding parties on-board were bound.
One group included a hearing-impaired bride to be, and 17 of her hearing-impaired guests.
“This is a real hijacking, this is f---ing serious. I want out of the country,” Mr. Fray shouted as he burst onto the plane.
Passengers initially thought they were part of a surreal movie, but reality set in, setting off a flurry of sobbing and praying throughout the cabin.
Flight attendants rushed four children, aged 7 to 13, to the back of the plane and told them to hit the ground. When some adults moved towards the back, Mr. Fray got even more enraged and told everybody to stay put.
As the situation deteriorated, the news reached Jamaica’s capital, Kingston, four hours away, as pounding on a hotel room door roused Canada’s prime minister from a deep sleep in Monday’s early morning hours. “Once I figured out, it’s not a dream, obviously, I was stunned,” Mr. Harper recalled.
Back on the plane, the situation had gone from bad to worse, to better again, before settling into the stalemate that would last until 6:20 a.m. Monday: Mr. Fray holding six crewmembers at gunpoint.
They were the only people left behind after flight attendants staged a daring bid to win the safety of the 159 passengers. But not before they had a traumatic showdown with Mr. Fray -- who became incensed as the flight attendants moved some people to the back of the plane.
He shouted at them to close the main door and get the plane airborne for Cuba.
“The flight attendants were excellent. They were heroic. They tried to calm him down,” said Shari Euloth, of Halifax.
But Mr. Fray continued to shout out, asserting his authority.
“He had the gun up to the stewardess’s neck, and when the co-pilot walked out, he shot.” Mr. Fray fired a single bullet out the open cabin door. No one got hit.
One report attributed to police suggested the bullet grazed the head of the co-pilot.
Ms. Euloth’s sister Susan, who was also getting married next week in Cuba, shuddered in her seat from the force of a blast she could not completely hear.
Mr. Fray had more outbursts.
“He got out the fire extinguisher and he sprayed down all the stewardesses with it at the front of the plane, in front of everybody. I thought he was going to blow us up,” said Shari Euloth.
Undaunted, the flight attendants offered a daring bargain to the desperate man: why not let the passengers go, if they leave their money and possessions behind?
Mr. Fray bought it.
“Leave everything on the plane, leave everything on the plane. Get out! Run! Don’t take your bags. You have a chance to get out. Take it!” Ms. Ferguson recalled the flight attendants calling out as passengers filed off.
In her own cacophony of silence, Susan Euloth left her wedding dress behind in her carry-on luggage and scurried to safety.
Only an hour had gone by, but to the passengers, their ordeal felt like an eternity. Their thoughts soon turned to the six crew members left behind.
The six were among the eight crew, who were identified as: Capt. James Murphy from Halifax, first officer Glenn Johnson from Montreal, flight attendants Nicole Rogers and Heidi Tofflemire of Halifax, Anu Goswami, Tony Bettencourt and Carolina Santizo Arriola of Toronto and air-care security officer Garry Knickle of Halifax.
“They put themselves between us and the hijackers at all times to make sure that we were safe,” said passenger Jill Eaton of Halifax. “We were happy to be alive. We thought we were dead.”
Behind the scenes, Jamaican Prime Minister Bruce Golding took charge of the negotiation, mortified Mr. Harper’s visit was about to be marred.
He called in Mr. Fray’s family members and friends to talk the young man into surrendering. But their pleas failed.
Mr. Golding ordered a commando raid on the plane, and Mr. Fray was captured without a shot being fired by in a textbook raid by the Jamaican military special forces, in which they also safely extracted the six remaining crew members.
Mr. Harper hugged Mr. Golding warmly after he flew down to Montego Bay Monday morning, and gushed at the professionalism of the Jamaican military.
After meeting the Canjet crew, the prime minister said they were heroes.
“The stress of the evening is probably now being fully felt now that the danger has actually passed,” the prime minister said of them.
Mr. Golding visited the Canadians at the airport after their release late Sunday night and returned Monday with Mr. Harper to the two resorts where the Jamaican government sent them. “I’m extremely relieved that it is over and nobody was hurt,” Golding said Monday. “I spoke with the passengers last night and apologized.”
The Jamaican PM promised a full investigation of the security breach but refused to speculate on how a gunman was able to successfully smuggle his weapon through the airport.
Mr. Fray was under interrogation Monday and had yet to be charged.
Jamaican authorities stressed this was first time they had such a security failing at one of their airports. As a major tourist destination, a loss of confidence in the integrity of their airport security could have serious economic ramifications.
The decompressing passengers had questions of their own.
“We were wondering how he got on the plane with a gun. We were all wondering: where was everybody?” said Shari Euloth.
But Mr. Harper was not ready to point fingers.
“We all know from our experience in our own country, systems are not perfect. What matters is how one responds to challenges when one is confronted with them,” said Mr. Harper.
“Today is a testament to the personal bravery of all those involved and the close co-operation between friends that has allowed us to save lives, and even more importantly, escape this without any injuries.”
A CanJet aircraft departed Montreal Monday afternoon and was to travel via Toronto to Montego Bay to take passengers and crew on to Cuba or back to Canada, should they choose to return home. The aircraft was scheduled to land in Halifax at 11:45 p.m. local time.
Many were wrestling with what to do next.
Seated next to her sister, Euloth suggested maybe she might want consider not getting married in Cuba next week.
But Susan Euloth would have none of that -- her animated hands vetoed that idea.
Said sister Shari: “Last night, we said we’d never travel again. But we have to go on.”
