DEVELOPING Person on fire outside Trump's hush money trial rushed away on a stretcher
A person who was on fire in a park outside the New York courthouse where Donald Trump’s hush money trial is taking place has been rushed away on a stretcher.
They are home.
The five-member Pivot Airlines crew, who had been detained in the Dominican Republic for almost eight months, is now back in Canada.
An emotional airport reunion took place in a special pre-arrivals area of Toronto Pearson International Airport, as the two flight attendants, pilot, co-pilot and mechanic were greeted by family.
The crew touched down shortly after 7 p.m. Pilot Rob DiVenanzo was engulfed in a hug with his wife Melanie, who is also a pilot, and his teenaged son Tyler, telling them “This is surreal, it’s such a relief, I feel like the last couple of months the hope was gone.”
Mechanic B.K. Dubey, with his three young children holding him around his legs, said, “I can’t believe I’m home. I can’t express what it feels like.”
Flight attendant Alex Rozov told his partner Eduardo: “This is a dream come true. This man is my rock, my everything. I love you so much.”
Their ordeal began on April 5, shortly before takeoff from Punta Cana International Airport on a return flight to Toronto. With seven Canadian passengers on board the chartered plane, the crew discovered eight large duffle bags stuffed in the plane’s avionics bay. They immediately notified Dominican authorities and the RCMP back in Canada.
Inside the bags were 210 kilograms of cocaine.
DiVenanzo believes they averted an air disaster by making the discovery before takeoff.
“There is no doubt in my mind that had we got airborne or attempted to get airborne, we would have been in trouble,” DiVenanzo told W5, explaining that the avionics bay houses the plane’s computer systems.
“They are not aviation professionals who did this. They’re jamming bags up there with control cables and threats of fire. It would have been a literal disaster.”
The crew thought they would be celebrated as heroes, but instead were imprisoned for nine days before being released on bail.
Since then, they have been under virtual house arrest, without their passports, on a no-fly list, and living in fear of retribution for disrupting a major shipment of cocaine. Those fears meant being moved to five different safe houses and requiring 24-hour armed protection.
Dominican laws allow a suspect to be held for up to a year without any charges being laid. The crew says they were never once questioned by Dominican authorities.
It’s not clear why the case was suddenly dropped. When the District Attorney released the news on Nov. 11, DiVenanzo tied the decision to let the crew go home to the fact W5 was on the ground asking questions of the government.
“The timing was critical. We’re very thankful to [W5]. I think we were at a point where things had gotten stale. And I think the pressure you guys put down here was the difference-maker. We had a lot of good people working for us in our company, but I think you being here at this particular time may have been the deciding factor.”
In making the announcement last month, the Dominican District Attorney simply stated that there was not enough evidence to proceed.
There are still many unanswered questions about who chartered the plane and what plans were in place to unload the drugs, had they arrived at Pearson airport. It’s the subject of a W5 investigation, ‘Cocaine Cargo,’ which airs Dec. 10 at 7 p.m. on CTV.
Watch W5’s investigation, 'Cocaine Cargo,' on Dec. 10, 2022, at 7 p.m. on CTV
A person who was on fire in a park outside the New York courthouse where Donald Trump’s hush money trial is taking place has been rushed away on a stretcher.
Soulful gospel artist Mandisa, a Grammy-winning singer who got her start as a contestant on 'American Idol' in 2006, has died, according to a statement on her verified social media. She was 47.
Scottish comedian Samantha Hannah was working on a comedy show about finding a husband when Toby Hunter came into her life. What happened next surprised them both.
A Manitoba woman thought she found a miracle natural supplement, but said a hidden ingredient wreaked havoc on her health.
One day after a Montreal police officer fired gunshots at a suspect in a stolen vehicle, senior officers were telling parliamentarians that organized crime groups are recruiting people as young as 15 in the city to steal cars so that they can be shipped overseas.
Police in Sault Ste. Marie charged a 22-year-old man with animal cruelty following an attack on a dog Thursday morning.
The Body Shop Canada is exploring a sale as it struggles to get its hands on enough inventory to keep up with "robust" sales after announcing it would file for creditor protection and close 33 stores.
Ontario Provincial Police have landed a suspect following a fishy theft in Beachburg, Ont.
The U.S.’s Federal Aviation Administration is investigating a video that appears to show unauthorized personnel in the cockpit of a charted Colorado Rockies flight to Toronto.
At 6'8" and 350 pounds, there is nothing typical about UBC offensive lineman Giovanni Manu, who was born in Tonga and went to high school in Pitt Meadows.
Kevin the cat has been reunited with his family after enduring a harrowing three-day ordeal while lost at Toronto Pearson International Airport earlier this week.
Molly Knight, a grade four student in Nova Scotia, noticed her school library did not have many books on female athletes, so she started her own book drive in hopes of changing that.
Almost 7,000 bars of pure gold were stolen from Pearson International Airport exactly one year ago during an elaborate heist, but so far only a tiny fraction of that stolen loot has been found.
When Les Robertson was walking home from the gym in North Vancouver's Lower Lonsdale neighbourhood three weeks ago, he did a double take. Standing near a burrow it had dug in a vacant lot near East 1st Street and St. Georges Avenue was a yellow-bellied marmot.
A moulting seal who was relocated after drawing daily crowds of onlookers in Greater Victoria has made a surprise return, after what officials described as an 'astonishing' six-day journey.
Just steps from Parliament Hill is a barber shop that for the last 100 years has catered to everyone from prime ministers to tourists.
A high score on a Foo Fighters pinball machine has Edmonton player Dave Formenti on a high.
A compound used to treat sour gas that's been linked to fertility issues in cattle has been found throughout groundwater in the Prairies, according to a new study.