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Change Your Life! |
Cuban plane crash survivors recount frightening trip |
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News
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September 24, 2000
KEY WEST, Florida (AP) - Ten Cubans fleeing their homeland in a vintage crop duster lost their way to America over the Gulf of Mexico and turned to God as their plane ran out of gas. Within minutes, a speck of a cargo ship, the Chios Dream, appeared on the horizon. "God put that boat there," Rodolfo Fuentes said Friday at a Key West hospital as he recalled the frightening events that followed Tuesday's daring escape from Cuba in a stolen plane. Nine of the 10 passengers survived the perilous, roundabout journey to America, despite a crash landing into choppy waters. One died before help arrived. The plane's pilot, Angel Lenin Iglesias Hernandez, told reporters Friday that air traffic controllers in Havana refused to help him during the flight after he asked for a Miami or Key West radio frequency. He said they knew his intention was to defect. Shortly after the state-owned plane took off Tuesday, the Cuban government said the pilot had reported the plane had been hijacked. "I don't know where the whole hijacking thing came from. We never said that to them," Hernandez said Friday. "It was something we all agreed on." Aboard the aircraft with Hernandez, 35, was his wife Mercedes Martinez-Paredes, 34, and their sons Eddie, 13, and Donny, 7. "My children are scared that they will be sent back to Cuba," said Hernandez, his left eye bruised from the ordeal. The U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service granted six of the nine survivors permission to apply for U.S. residency. The Fuentes family members were given temporary humanitarian parole until they can be processed by the INS, a step that was delayed because of their hospital stays. Fuentes, 35, and his wife, Liliana Ponzoa, 35, stopped by St. Mary Star of the Sea Roman Catholic Church in Key West to say prayers after being released from the hospital. Ponzoa, who suffered a severe cut to the leg, limped into the church and knelt before a statue of Jesus. Fuentes, recovering from a concussion, sobbed as he prayed, his cries echoing through the empty church. A few hours earlier in the hospital, Fuentes recalled the escape from Cuba, the crash and the rescue. After the passengers spotted the Chios Dream, the plane's pilot steered the aircraft toward the ship and circled five, six, seven times. Finally, a sailor looked up and saw the aircraft. "On the final pass, we all got ready. We took off our shoes. We took off our shirts and put our heads between our legs," Fuentes said. "We prayed to God and we landed." The plane bumped across the surface of the water. When it came to a halt the passengers climbed out. It would be 45 minutes before the Chios Dream arrived. "I had so much faith that I knew we were going to live," Ponzoa said. Her husband wasn't so sure. "Thank God we're alive," Ponzoa said, choking back tears and clutching the hand of her 6-year-old son, Andy. On the Net INS: http://www.ins.gov FAA: http://www.faa.gov Coast Guard: http://www.uscg.mil
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