NEW YORK, Oct. 17 (UPI) -- A former airport baggage handler in New York was sentenced to three life sentences and more for smuggling drugs hidden within airplanes, court documents said.
Victor Bourne, 37, was given the sentences and an additional 35 years by Federal Judge Nicholas Garaufis in Brooklyn, N.Y, for endangering the lives of airline passengers in a scheme that smuggled cocaine and other illegal drugs in cargo holds and internal walls of American Airlines' planes arriving and departing New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport, the New York Post said Wednesday.
Garaufis said Bourne's actions jeopardized the safety of air passengers, noting in one case, an airplane's wing was disassembled to hide narcotics inside.
"The need to protect the public from these kinds of dangers requires a long sentence," the judge said, adding that Bourne's acts were "placing hundreds of passengers' lives at risk."
Bourne's mother, Maria Alleyne, who court documents said hired a witch doctor to put a curse on prosecutors, refused to enter the courtroom for the sentencing, the newspaper said.
