Berserk man ‘made ‘guttural’ noises before dying on plane
The 24-year-old Brazilian, named last night as John Kennedy Santos Gurjao, died on a Sunday afternoon flight from Lisbon to Dublin, which was diverted to Cork after the captain declared a medical emergency.
Last night, a number of packages were recovered from the man’s body during an autopsy. They have been sent for forensic analysis and a determination on the cause of death will not be made until after the results are available.
David O’Brien from Castleknock in Dublin was sitting behind the man and said the incident began roughly an hour into the flight.
“He was on the way down to the bathroom at the back, but he started climbing over all the chairs with people still sitting in them, jumping on the trollies that the staff were serving teas and coffees from and then all of a sudden there was a lot of shouting,” Mr O’Brien said.
“People were shouting ‘grab him’, a couple of lads grabbed him but he was just swinging and flailing his arms all over the place.”
Mr O’Brien said that some passengers subdued the man before he was restrained, and one person was bitten.
“He was just growling, he was making strange noises. He was in pain. It was eerie. He was on the ground for about 15 minutes, screaming, then about 10 minutes after that they were performing CPR on him.”
Two nurses and a doctor tended to the man while the flight was diverted to Cork Airport. The 168 passengers stayed on board for two hours while police and emergency services attended the scene.
The passengers were then brought to the terminal at Cork Airport where gardaí took statements, before being bussed to Dublin.
John Leonard, another passenger, described the man’s screams as “guttural”.
“The noise he was making was like something I’d never heard before and wouldn’t like to hear again. It was like a deep anguish,” he told Cork’s 96FM.
Gardaí were last night questioning a Portuguese woman in her 40s at Togher Garda Station, after an unknown substance was found in her luggage.
