'Cocaine Cargo': Eagle-eyed flight attendant on how she uncovered key evidence
Christina Carello knows she is a good flight attendant. She’s been shepherding vacationers and executives around the world for 14 years. What she didn’t know, until a sensational series of events, is that she is a pretty good detective as well.
The 33-year-old Ontario woman’s painstaking digging uncovered the fact that key evidence had been tampered with, in a legal ordeal that kept her and her airline crew trapped in the Dominican Republic for more than seven months.
The nightmare began on April 5, 2022, when the Pivot Airlines crew was making final preparations to return seven Canadian passengers on a chartered flight from Punta Cana to Toronto. Carello was on board the plane when pilot Rob Divananzo made an announcement.
"The pilot actually came out of the flight deck and did a PA, letting the passengers know that they had to deplane because they found something on the plane," Carello told W5.
The passengers disembarked and headed to a VIP lounge while Christina and the rest of the crew stayed on the tarmac. They watched in horror as a big black duffle bag, tied up in yellow rope, was removed from the plane’s avionics bay -- a compartment under the plane that houses the computer systems.
"We didn’t know what it was. It could have been a bomb," Carello said.
But there wasn’t just one bag. There were eight. And it wasn’t a bomb. It was 210 kilograms of cocaine.
Carello says heavily armed Dominican drug squad officers eventually appeared and lined the crew and the passengers up in front of the 50-seat jet.
"The one guy said, ‘I am going to put powder in the package. If it turns blue, it’s positive for cocaine.’ And it turned blue. And at that point, he said we were all being detained. Then we got put in handcuffs. We were all in shock. Nobody knew what to say," she said.
The crew spent nine days in jail and then months under virtual house arrest, with no passports, on a no-fly list, and living in fear of retribution for reporting the drugs and disrupting a cocaine pipeline to Canada.
They were never interviewed by police. And then, out of the blue, on Nov. 10, 2022, the district attorney dropped the case against them. The crew and seven passengers are now back in Canada.
For the first time, Carello is telling the story of how she discovered that someone had tampered with airport surveillance video taken the night before the drugs were found. It’s a discovery that proves neither the crew nor the passengers could have physically loaded the drugs onto the plane.
Christina Carello in her flight attendant uniform (Supplied photo)
About three months into their detention, the Dominican prosecutor shared hours of raw surveillance video of Punta Cana airport with Pivot Airline lawyers. The crew, living in their guarded safe house, was given access to the video and spent hours poring over it.
Christina, with a notepad in hand, was about four hours into watching the footage when she hit the jackpot.
“I was tired, right? So I was like ‘Am I…are my eyes crazy?’ I had to keep playing it back and forth. I’m like, something is obviously wrong there.”
While everyone else who viewed the video -- including lawyers and investigators -- had focused on the plane, Carello was looking at the timestamp. She noticed that 40 minutes had been edited out of the video.
But then she found something else. Buried deep in a misnamed file, she discovered another video from a different angle. One that was not edited. Carello yelled out to the four other crew members.
"I said, 'I need you guys to watch this and see if I’m crazy, if I am actually seeing this right.'"
In the unedited video, you can see a Punta Cana airport truck pull up close to the plane at about 3:30 am, and over the next 25 minutes, big black bags pile up and then disappear into the plane’s belly.
Lawyers for the crew and passengers confirm that hotel surveillance video shows no one left their hotel during the night.
So, who edited the airport surveillance video? Pivot Airlines CEO Eric Edmondson says if Dominican authorities were interested in finding out, it wouldn’t be a difficult investigation.
"What we have learned is that the evidence was gathered at the security office of the Punta Cana airport. The people that have edit power of that video can only use…fingerprints to edit. I think it should be a fairly easy job to figure out who did it, given the time of day and when it was edited," Edmondson said.
W5 is airing a special investigation on Saturday night at 7 p.m. into mysterious and shady events both in the Dominican Republic and in Canada surrounding attempts to smuggle 210 kg. of cocaine into Canada.
Christina Carello, meanwhile, is trying to put the nightmare in paradise behind her.
"I think I’ll take maybe a month or two [off work], but my passion is flying. I won’t leave it."
Will she ever fly back to the Dominican Republic?
"Never."
Do you have any tips on this story? Please contact Eric Szeto eric.szeto@bellmedia.ca or Avery Haines avery.haines@bellmedia.ca
CTVNews.ca Top Stories
Freeland leaves capital gains tax change out of coming budget implementation bill, here's why
Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland will be tabling yet another omnibus bill to pass a sweeping range of measures promised in her April 16 federal budget, though left out of the legislation will be the government's proposed capital gains tax change.
Ontario woman surprised after 20-year-old fines suddenly tank credit score
An Ontario woman says that she was shocked when provincial fines from 20 years ago suddenly tanked her credit score last week, but the situation may not be as unusual as it seems, according to at least one debt expert.
Anger can harm your blood vessel function, study shows
Stress and anger can have a negative impact on cardiovascular health, studies have shown. New research points to just how the mechanism may work.
A 98-year-old in Ukraine walked miles to safety from Russians, with slippers and a cane
A 98-year-old woman in Ukraine who escaped Russian-occupied territory by walking almost 10 kilometres (six miles) alone, wearing a pair of slippers and supported by a cane has been reunited with her family days after they were separated while fleeing to safety.
Will an 'out of sight, out of mind' cellphone policy make a difference in Ontario schools?
Ontario’s cellphone ban in schools has been met with mixed reaction, with some teachers concerned about constant policing of kids and experts applauding the change as necessary for student learning.
A Utah couple accidentally shipped their cat with an Amazon return. A week -- and 3 'miracles' -- later, they were on a plane to meet a stranger
The Amazon returns employee wasn't at work the day one of her colleagues at a California warehouse found a small, furry stowaway in a box mailed six days earlier from Utah. But Brandy Hunter got the call anyway.
Dueling protesters clash at UCLA hours after police clear pro-Palestinian demonstration at Columbia
Dueling groups of protesters clashed Wednesday at the University of California, Los Angeles, grappling in fistfights and shoving, kicking and using sticks to beat one another. Hours earlier, police burst into a building at Columbia University that pro-Palestinian protesters took over and broke up a demonstration that had paralyzed the school while inspiring others.
Poilievre kicked out of Commons after calling Prime Minister Justin Trudeau 'wacko'
Testy exchanges between the prime minister and his chief opponent ended with the Opposition leader and one of his MPs being ejected from the House of Commons on Tuesday -- and the rest of Conservative caucus walking out of the chamber in protest.
Avalanche eliminate Winnipeg Jets from playoffs with 6-3 road win
Mikko Rantanen's first two goals of the playoffs propelled the Colorado Avalanche to a 6-3 victory over the Winnipeg Jets on Tuesday that clinched their opening-round playoff series in five games.
Local Spotlight
Quebec police officer anonymously donates kidney, changes schoolteacher's life
A police officer on Montreal's South Shore anonymously donated a kidney that wound up drastically changing the life of a schoolteacher living on dialysis.
Canada's oldest hat store still going strong after 90 years
Since 1932, Montreal's Henri Henri has been filled to the brim with every possible kind of hat, from newsboy caps to feathered fedoras.
Road closed in Oak Bay, B.C., so elephant seal can cross
Police in Oak Bay, B.C., had to close a stretch of road Sunday to help an elephant seal named Emerson get safely back into the water.
B.C. breweries take home awards at World Beer Cup
Out of more than 9,000 entries from over 2,000 breweries in 50 countries, a handful of B.C. brews landed on the podium at the World Beer Cup this week.
Kitchener family says their 10-year-old needs life-saving drug that cost $600,000
Raneem, 10, lives with a neurological condition and liver disease and needs Cholbam, a medication, for a longer and healthier life.
Haida Elder suing Catholic Church and priest, hopes for 'healing and reconciliation'
The lawyer for a residential school survivor leading a proposed class-action defamation lawsuit against the Catholic Church over residential schools says the court action is a last resort.
'It was instant karma': Viral video captures failed theft attempt in Nanaimo, B.C.
Mounties in Nanaimo, B.C., say two late-night revellers are lucky their allegedly drunken antics weren't reported to police after security cameras captured the men trying to steal a heavy sign from a downtown business.
Fergus, Ont. man feels nickel-and-dimed for $0.05 property tax bill
A property tax bill is perplexing a small townhouse community in Fergus, Ont.
Twins from Toronto were Canada's top two female finishers at this year's Boston Marathon
When identical twin sisters Kim and Michelle Krezonoski were invited to compete against some of the world’s most elite female runners at last week’s Boston Marathon, they were in disbelief.