Jamaica hostage drama ends with hijacker arrest

Police stormed a hijacked airliner in Jamaica Monday and captured a mentally troubled gunman without firing a shot, ending a harrowing airport standoff in which 182 people had initially been taken hostage.

Six shaken crewmembers -- the last remaining hostages -- were rescued in what Jamaican Information Minister Daryl Vaz called "a clean operation."

"It has ended the best way it could, which is no fatalities, no injuries," Vaz told CBC. "Everybody is unharmed."

"And the six crew members have actually disembarked the plane and are now in the actual airport terminal," he said.

The armed youth, identified by officials as a troubled 20-year-old man named Stephen Fray from the Montego Bay area, had earlier allowed all passengers and two crew to leave the chartered CanJet Boeing 737.

Canjet said the plane had been due to depart Montego Bay for Cuba with 174 Canadian passengers and eight crew when it was hijacked.

Local officials gave the number of passengers released as 157. There was no immediate explanation for the discrepancy.

The intruder managed to pass security and sneak into the plane shortly before midnight local time during a layover.

A flight stewardess was able to reason with Fray as he threatened passengers with a gun to allow hostages off the plane, according to passenger Jamie Spear, who described the scene to his mother after the drama ended.

The hijacker had demanded cash from passengers, and the stewardess "seemed to be able to calm him and tried to ... reason with him into letting them off if they left their money," Cheryl Spear told CBC.

"That seemed to have worked for him and that seemed to be the way they were able to get off the plane," she said.

Asked about the hijacker's mental condition, Vaz later told CBC: "Put it this way, he is definitely a troubled young man and, of course, the evaluations will tell exactly what the challenges were."

Vaz said the youth's family had been at the airport helping in efforts to negotiate an end to the standoff, but those negotiations broke down.

The Jamaican police and military then made the decision to go in, Vaz said, adding the police stormed the plane, but giving no details on how the operation unfolded.

"The six crew members are definitely shaken up but they are unharmed and they are now being debriefed and hopefully we can get them to a place of comfort in the shortest possible time so they can recuperate," he said.

"Everyone is fine and off the aircraft and are just being attended to for medical precautions," CanJet General Manager Ken Woodside in Halifax, Canada, told a press conference, adding the airline had been working with Jamaican authorities to resolve the drama.

A Canjet flight left Montreal later Monday to take passengers on to Cuba or back to Canada if they wished, Woodside told reporters.

CanJet Airlines Flight 918 was being operated for Transat Tours Canada.





REUTERS/Mario Anzuoni

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