Stowaway In Crate Would Have Died

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31595, 5 February 1968, Page 13

Stowaway In Crate Would Have Died

(N .Z.P.A.-Reuter— Copyright)

NEW YORK, February 4.

A youth of 19 who tried to air freight himself to Australia because he was homesick for his friends there, is lucky to be alive, according to a United States attorney in New York.

Michael Lucien Szwej, of Philadelphia, was appearing before a United States Commissioner yesterday after airport police had found him curled up inside a four-foot plywood packing case at the John F. Kennedy airport. The crate would have travelled in an unpressurised compartment. The attorney, Mr Robert Kraft, said Szwej had expected the crate to be loaded into the pressurised cargo bay of a Pan-American airliner and flown to Melbourne, but the airline had altered its

plans and changed planes. “He is a very lucky boy—he would not have reached

Belbourne alive,” Mr Kraft said. After the hearing, Szwej was released into the custody of his father. The crate, labelled as containing an X-ray machine, was taken from Philadelphia io New York by truck and then left at the airport. Szwej expected to remain in the box for 30 hours, but after 26 hours it was still at the airport. He was discovered when an airport employee heard tapping from the box and then a muffled voice asking “When does the plane leave?” In Philadelphia, his mother

said her son was homesick for Australia, where the family had spent more than 10 years