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 Previous: In Brief |  Next: Texas Hams Pitch In as Tornadoes Rake Fort Worth |
NEWINGTON, CT--Mar 29, 2000--In a dramatic situation that is still unfolding in Central America, Amateur Radio operators on the 20-meter Maritime Net have helped get a wounded boy to safety following an attack by what are being called "pirates."
The nightmare began yesterday afternoon for the family of Jacco van Tuijl, KH2TD, as he and his 13-year-old son Willem, were in inflatable dinghy, not far from their 44-foot sailing sloop. Wife and mother Jannie van Tuijl, KH2TE, remained aboard the sailboat.
Jacco van Tuijl said the family had left the San Blas Islands a couple of days ago and was anchored behind a reef with a couple of other sailboats in the vicinity--one at anchor--some 50 miles off the coast of Honduras.
The father and son were visiting with acquaintances aboard the other anchored sailboat when Jacco van Tuijl spotted an open wooden boat with four or five men aboard come alongside his vessel.
"All of a sudden, I see them crawling aboard my boat," he said today in a phone-patch interview with the ARRL via Ed Petzolt, K1LNC, in Florida.
Fearing something amiss, Jacco van Tuijl and his son headed back toward their vessel--Hayat--to find out what was going on. "About 20 yards away from my boat, one of these guys got nervous and got out a gun," van Tuijl recalled. "My wife was screaming, 'Get away, get away, they're tying me up." van Tuijl described the weapon as a "machine gun" with a banana-shaped ammunition clip.
While van Tuijl was trying to escape in the dinghy, the pirate began firing upon him and his son. van Tuijl said bullets tore into the dinghy, deflating one side of it and flipping the small vessel over and nearly sinking it. At least one shot struck Willem van Tuijl in the abdomen. "We ended up in the water and I'm starting to yell and scream at these guys, 'He's killing my son." van Tuijl said the marauders "got nervous" and got back into their vessel and approached the father and son in the water. van Tuijl suspects they wanted to confirm that the boy actually had been wounded. "One of these guys had a big machete, and he wanted to chop into us." van Tuijl speculated that the pirates--who claimed to be from Nicaragua--had not intended to injure anyone but might only have wanted money or valuables.
"They wanted me and my son to get on board to get what they could get," van Tuijl said. His wife was not injured.
van Tuijl says the pirates took aboard the damaged dinghy and its outboard and left the scene, while he hauled his injured son back to his sailboat and got him aboard. "My son has no feeling in his legs anymore, so we pulled him up. He's got a hole in his side and lots of blood coming out," he said.
| In this edited RealAudio clip, Jacco van Tuijl, KH2TD, describes via Amateur Radio his and his wounded son's harrowing escape from gun-toting marauders off the coast of Honduras. This was taken from a phone-patch interview via K1LNC in Florida, who was in contact with KH2TD on 20 meters. |
Someone aboard the neighboring sailboat hailed van Tuijl on the VHF radio urging him to get on his ham radio. van Tuijl checked into the Maritime Net on 14.300 MHz, seeking urgent assistance. The other two vessels in the vicinity and the van Tuijl's then pulled anchor and headed for Honduras.
In the meantime, the family attempted to render first aid to Willem. Two Amateur Radio-physicians (one is believed to be Jim Hirschman, K4TCV) in Florida provided the family with valuable medical advice that van Tuijl thinks helped to keep the youth alive overnight until they could rendezvous with a Honduran Navy vessel that had been alerted by another amateur on the Net. In the US, Clark Lowry, N7AAC, in Arizona, was among those on the Net who contacted the US Coast Guard to render possible assistance. Lowry says he followed the situation on the air for about nine hours.
van Tuijl said that once he and his son were aboard, the three boats took off. "We headed toward the coast of Honduras, where we arrived this morning. It took me the whole night to get here, by engine, all the time hoping my son would survive," he said.
"He's a great kid, he held in very strong." Nevertheless, van Tuijl said, his son lost "an awful lot of blood during the night."
After mother and son were taken aboard the Honduran Naval vessel at around 9 AM today (ET), they were helicoptered to Vicente de Antonio Hospital in La Saba, Honduras. The boy was reported to be in stable condition but headed for surgery this afternoon. Petzolt was able to phone patch the van Tuijls via Amateur Radio so they could discuss their son's current condition. He was able to call the hospital with the help of information from the US Embassy in Tegucigalpa, Honduras.
Noting that his son did not lose consciousness during the night, van Tuijl was optimistic. As of this afternoon, he remained aboard his boat, awaiting further word on his son's condition. The vessel is anchored in open water right outside a lagoon, approximately a half-mile from shore.
The van Tuijls are from the Netherlands and have been sailing all over the world for the past five years, logging some 40,000 miles of travel. Jacco van Tuijl said he and his wife decided to get their Amateur Radio tickets during an extended stay in Guam. Both hold General class licenses. van Tuijl agreed that the decision to get licensed turned out to be a good one.
van Tuijl said the family was on its way back to the Netherlands when the incident occurred. He says he hopes the name of his vessel--Hayat--will be a good omen. In Turkish, his mother's native language, van Tuijl said, "it means 'life.' That's got to be a good sign."
Petzolt, who lives in Hobe Sound, Florida, was the 1999 ARRL International Humanitarian Award winner. He was cited for his efforts to help rescue a family being held hostage in Guatemala. Several other amateurs offered assistance to the family during their ordeal.
| Previous: In Brief | Next: Texas Hams Pitch In as Tornadoes Rake Fort Worth |
