More than two weeks after a Californian teen survived a 5-hour flight journey by stowing away in the riding wheel of a Hawaiian Airlines jet , Maui airport authorities released a footage showing the disoriented boy wandering around the tarmac.
The surveillance video shows the 15-year-old, who is identified as Yahya Abdi, getting down from the wheel well of the Hawaiian Airlines and strolling on the Kahului Airport, Maui. Yahya endured over a 5-hour journey from San Jose to Maui by hiding in a wheel well of the plane. The air temperature at 11,000 meters - the common travelling altitude for commercial jetliners - is about -55 degree celcius. Mountaineers call the altitude above 8,500 meters the 'death zone.'
Yahya, who also goes by the name of Yahya Yusuf, jumped the San Jose International Airport fence just after 1 a.m. April 20. He wandered on the tarmac nearly 6 hours before getting noticed by the authorities.
The footage shows Yahya sitting on the ground for roughly 13 seconds and then getting up and slowly walking to the front of the plane. He walks in a wobbly state, stopping briefly a few times in the around 40 seconds it takes him to get under the passageway joining the front of the airplane with the terminal, reports the Associated Press.
Abdi walks up to an airport worker driving a cart, and the two talk for about three minutes before walking away together. The boy stays standing the whole time.
He told the authorities that he wanted to go to Somalia to meet his mother and he did not know which plane went where, an official told CNN. Yahya was taken to a Hawaiian hospital for treatment. He is under the custody of Santa Clara County Child Protective Services, California.
Yahya was initially taken into the custody of the State of Hawaiʻi Department of Human Services, Child Welfare Branch.
MauiNow.com reports that the department stated April 29 that the father of the boy arrived in Hawaii. It later said that Yahya was safe and no longer in Hawaii.
Authorities had said then that the boy was "lucky to be alive."
