By Hank Tester
NBCMIAMI.com
updated 10/4/2011 11:45:28 PM ET
The first-ever international hijacking operation originating on U.S.
soil departed from Miami International Airport on November 1, 1958.
Cubana Airlines flight 495 was forced to attempt to land on a small
airstrip in eastern Cuba, but plunged into nearby Nipe Bay.
Locals near the crash site remember the wreckage and the runway being
too short for the four-engine prop jet.
Fourteen people died in the crash, and six survived, including most of
the hijackers who fled the crash and joined Fidel Castro's 26 of July
revolutionary movement, according to U.S. State Department documents. .
Mike Medrano, whose father was the pilot of the plane, said he remembers
his mother sobbing and looking at a photo of her dead husband.
"I will never forget that sight in their bedroom holding a small
photograph which I still have, just sobbing standing there sobbing.
Everytime I think about that it always hits me," said Medrano, who was
five at the time of the crash.
He and his sister Patricia Pita remember their father as a loving man
who played the piano and was an accomplished aviator. He loved astonomy
and devoted to his children.
"Life changed completely for us. We were just a happy family. He was
such a great and wonderful father," said Pita.
For years, unknown to family members of the passengers on the plane, one
of the alleged hijackers has lived in Hialeah within miles of the victims.
A property dispute over a house in El Portal exposed 70-year-old Edmundo
Ponce de Leon because his sister wanted survivors of the crash to
testify to his character.
The legal action against Ponce de Leon made headlines.
"I never knew it till the day it was in the paper," said survivor Osiris
Martinez, who lost his wife and children in the crash.
Two crash survivors and a member of Ponce de Leon's family identified
him as one of the hijackers.
Ponce de Leon is a U.S. citizen and Air Force veteran. He had said he
was on the plane because he was going on vacation, but that doesn't
explain why he remained outside the U.S. until the early 90s.
In Cuba at the time of the hijacking, Fidel Castro had all but wrapped
up his revolution. The hijackers told the terrified passengers they were
supporting the Castro 26 of July movement.
Ponce de Leon's cousin said he told her he participated.
"He told them he could...get guns and ammunition to help the cause and
they told him the revolution was almost over and told him we don't need
you," said Solange McCargar.
McCargar said Ponce de Leon told her the Cuban revolutionary leadership
didn't have a problem with the hijacking.
"I asked him 'You were not authorized to do it? He said they are OK with
it,'" she said.
Wayne Smith, then attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Havana, was sent to the
crash site to oversee American interests.
"It was accepted as a 26 of July operation, whether in fact it had been
that way or not," Smith said.
Ponce de Leon immediately joined the revolution after the hijacking,
said McCargar.
Documents reveal that right after the crash, the American Civil
Aernoautics Authority, the FAA's predecessor, declined to get involved.
It was, after all, a Cuban airliner that crashed in Cuba.
The case hasn't been prosecuted so far because of the lack of evidence,
and also because it was such an old event.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44781348/ns/local_news-miami_fl/#.ToxWIHIuAUM
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