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(CMC)— Belizean Police Commissioner Chester Williams says “it is reasonable to say” that justifiable force was used by an aeroplane passenger who shot and killed American Akinyela Taylor after he hijacked the aircraft, injuring three people on Thursday.
Taylor had hijacked a Cessna 208EX Grand Caravan carrying 15 passengers and one pilot from one section of Belize to another.
None of the passengers were fatally wounded, and the three men who were stabbed in the incident are in stable condition. According to authorities, passengers Jair Castaneda and Fitzgerald Brown have been released, while pilot Howell Grange remains hospitalised.
Initial reports had indicated only two men were injured
Taylor was killed when the plane landed at the Philip Goldson International Airport by one of the passengers, who was armed with a licensed gun.
Asked by 5 Great Belize Television as to whether the authorities are considering laying charges against the passenger, the commissioner said “that is not something that is going to be decided by the police.”
“But I can tell you from a legal standpoint looking at section 30 of the criminal court, which deals with just abuse of force and harm, it says that a person may use force even to the extreme necessity to kill in certain circumstances. And those circumstances include where it is perceived that one is going to cause grievous harm to another”.
Williams said that the force use can be either in defense of yourself or another person and regarding the hijack situation the persons on board that flight where the lives of 14 people were in danger by a knife-wielding man who had already injured three people on board that flight “it would be reasonable to say that the force used was justified. And so what we are going to do is put the file together and we send to the DPP for final determination”.
Prior to the hijacking of the plane, Taylor is reported to have been involved in several incidents that attracted the police’s attention.
Earlier this month, Taylor caused a disturbance at the Philip Goldson International Airport when he attempted to board a United Airlines flight to the US without a ticket, prompting security to remove him.
After the incident, Taylor tried to enter Mexico but was denied entry there and returned to Belize.
Police said they later found him hiding in an abandoned building in the Corozal Free Zone, but released him afterwards.
The commissioner defended the actions of the police, who had been criticised by members of the public, saying that the hijacking could have been prevented if Taylor had been detained.
Williams said that Taylor had arrived here through the Philip Goldson International Airport and subsequently left the country for Mexico.
“Apparently when he went to Mexico, he did not pass for immigration, so there was no stump from immigration to show that he had gone over to Mexico and vice versa, from Mexico coming back into Belize.
And so based on that, immigration had denied him entry into the country at the northern border.
“In a situation like that, where a person is refused entry, what happens is that person is sent back to where they’re coming from.
If it was a situation where they were coming through the PGIA, what immigration would do, they would issue an RLL- refuse leave to land. You would then be put on a next flight back out of the country. In this case, it’s a land border.”
Williams said that Taylor went back over to the Mexican side a few days before the hijacking and was later seen in the free zone.
“If you’re coming from Mexico, you don’t pass through immigration.
You would know the immigration station is after free zone. So once you are a tourist from Mexico or whatever, you can have access to the free zone without immigration authorization. So he was found there.”
Williams said that the police had been told that “that there was no offense committed because he was in the free zone area and he would not have reached immigration.
“So not even an immigration offense would’ve been committed. And so based on that…any detention then would’ve been an unlawful detention”.
Last week, the Belize government described as “an extraordinary and rare circumstance” the hijacking of the plane saying it remains confident that the event was not linked to any border threat.
It said also that the Department of Civil Aviation is working closely with the United States Embassy and other relevant authorities to ensure “a comprehensive inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the incident”.
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