SANTO DOMINGO – Dominican police arrested a man for making a phony bomb threat that paralyzed this capital’s Las Americas International Airport for more than two hours earlier this week, authorities said Nov. 7.
Police said the man is Cristino Espinal, 47, who telephoned the airport Nov. 3 in the afternoon to warn that a bomb had been planted aboard one of the aircraft parked at the terminal.
Realizing the scale of the commotion he caused, Espinal decided to get rid of his cell phone by tossing it in an outdoor latrine at the home of his mother law in Pantoja, a town north of Santo Domingo.
But investigators managed to track down the phone, which in turn led them to Espinal, who was arrested Thursday at his home in the capital neighborhood of El Palmar de Herrera.
The bomb threat forced airport managers to evacuate some 800 passengers from a dozen planes bound for destinations including New York, Santiago de Cuba, Panama City and San Juan, Puerto Rico, delaying some of those flights by more than two
hours.
–EFE
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