A 10-year-old boy phoned a bomb threat against a flight arriving at the Dominican Republic's main airport triggering chaos and an hours-long security lockdown, authorities said today.
The boy made the threat on Tuesday against a Jetairfly plane arriving from Brussels with 274 people on board and identified himself as "Pablo Escobar, Lord of the Skies," invoking the name of a notorious Colombian drug lord who was killed in 1993.
"The phone call was made by a 10-year-old boy whose name has not been released for legal reasons," said a statement from the Caribbean country's National Investigations Department, which did not immediately reveal why the child had identified that specific flight.
Re-routing of numerous flights and other security measures led to financial losses of as much as $1 million.
Police were able to trace the phone call to a house on the outskirts of the capital Santo Domingo and the boy was arrested. He was later released to the custody of relatives.
