When Wayne Murray, 52, arranged a week in Montego Bay, Jamaica, last spring with his wife Mina, 51, it was supposed to be a stress reliever. Mina’s sister had just died of cancer. The Halifax couple, avid travellers who have been married for 30 years and have two sons, enjoyed “a perfect vacation—sun every day.” Until, that is, the night they were supposed to leave. On Apr. 19, 2009, a crazed, gun-wielding hijacker raided CanJet Airlines flight 918, taking its crew and 159 passengers hostage, including the Murrays. They initiated a heroic escape. Stephen Fray is presently on trial in Montego Bay.
For weeks after their horrendous ordeal, Wayne, who manages a car dealership, and Mina, a nurse, couldn’t talk about it. At the encouragement of their trauma counsellor, Wayne wrote an account of what happened with Mina. Associate Editor Cathy Gulli spoke to the Murrays about how they faced down a hijacker, and adapted their story for this Maclean’s exclusive.
We left our hotel at 8 p.m. on Sunday for Sangster International Airport in Montego Bay to fly home to Halifax. Half an hour later, we arrived and checked in with CanJet. We went through security, but then, in the departure immigration area, the officer noticed Mina’s boarding pass didn’t match her passport (it read Jacynthe-Mina), so we had to get a new one. Even though it was an inconvenience, we felt good about officials picking up on this small detail.
With that resolved, we passed through a metal scanner where I had to remove my shoes and belt. Mina, who used to work at the liquor store at the Halifax International Airport, noticed there were no security or police officers around, just airport employees. At the duty-free shop, we picked up some Jamaican treats for our friends in Canada, bottles of rum. Just before 10 p.m., we arrived at our loading terminal, and 15 minutes later we took our seats on the plane—4A and 4B.
We talked about how this had been one of the best trips we’d ever had. The last two couples were just about to board the plane when a slim young man went around them, got on and said something to the male captain and a female flight attendant. He was wearing a short-sleeved grey shirt, and in his rush, it billowed. That’s when Mina noticed he had a gun tucked into his belt. She blurted out: “Wayne, that man has a gun!” I didn’t see it, but I could hear the fear in Mina’s voice, so I tried to reassure her. “No, he doesn’t. But if he does, then he’s a sky marshal.”
At that exact moment, the man pulled out his gun, and while waving it around, ordered those last couples to get out. They obliged. That’s when we realized he was a hijacker. Without hesitation, he started shoving the gun in the faces of the captain and flight attendant, yelling: “Yeah, they know I’m here and they know I have a f—ing gun, so close the f—ing door and get this bitch plane in the air!” We assumed “they” referred to security. The captain told the hijacker we couldn’t take off because the door to the plane had to be closed from outside. The flight attendant added that the plane hadn’t been fuelled yet. They sounded calm, which was comforting for everyone except the hijacker, who didn’t believe them. In his frustration, he grabbed the captain’s identification tag from his neck, put it on, and shouted, “Close the plane door! Close the door!”
Ten minutes had passed when a security officer got on the plane and tried to find out what the hijacker wanted. He replied, “This plane is headed to the U.S., so let’s get up in the air.” The officer told the hijacker he was mistaken, this plane was headed to Santa Clara, Cuba and then Halifax. “The plane you want is loading next to us,” he said, which was true. The hijacker moved toward the exit but then, seeming to suspect a lie, he stepped back into the plane’s galley. The security officer stood in front of the hijacker, blocking his view of the passenger cabin. Any time the hijacker moved, the security officer did too.
That’s when the flight attendants started walking up and down the aisle saying to passengers, “We have been trained for this. Try to keep calm.” There were empty seats at the back of the plane, so they moved the people from the first three rows. This left us as the first passengers the hijacker could see. We felt vulnerable. There was fear all around. I wasn’t taking my eyes off the hijacker because I was trying to anticipate what might come next. Mina kept saying, “Wayne, don’t stare at him,” because she could tell the hijacker was mentally unstable.
The security officer, who was talking to someone via a walkie-talkie, said to the hijacker: “They want to know what kind of a gun you have.” The hijacker put it up to his face, read the stamp, and screamed, “It’s a f—ing .38!” He forced the security officer to sit in the first row, and then turned to the captain. The hijacker pushed the gun up to his face again, and then he shoved him out of the plane, yelling, “Close the door! Close the door!” None of the passengers could see the captain, and the doors stayed open. We didn’t think he intended to shut them, but we didn’t know if he actually tried. So the hijacker pointed the gun in the direction of the captain, and pulled the trigger.
