PLANE NOT HIJACKED

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 31983, 9 May 1969, Page 11

PLANE NOT HIJACKED

Insecticide Plot Foiled (N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) MIAMI (Florida), May 8. Two teen-age sweethearts were gaoled in Miami yesterday for trying to hijack an airliner to Cuba with the aid of a can of insecticide. The sentences imposed on Michael Anthony Peparo and Tasmine Rebecca Fitzgerald, both aged 18, were ordered by Judge Clyde Atkins, of the Federal Court, to be “indeterminate”—which means the pair could serve as little as three months. They can be released when the Court finds them “worthy of rejoining society”—there is no maximum time limit.

Peparo and Miss Fitzgerald both from New York State, were accused of trying to hijack a National Airlines jet to Cuba while it was flying from New York to Miami last September. The long-haired Peparo threatened the pilot, Captain Harry Davis, and his crew with what looked like a hand grenade, but was reaily an insecticide aerosol. Mr Robert Floyd, Peparo’s lawyer, told the Court: “Captain Davis only a few months before had found God. When the boy invaded the cockpit with an aerosol can of insecticide, he placed his hands on the boy’s hands and they prayed together.” The plane landed safely in Miami, where the two wouldbe hijackers were arrested.