By Casey Neill
An eyewitness has described tackling a Dandenong man he thought was trying to hijack his flight to Malaysia.
The man, a 25-year-old Sri Lankan national who was studying catering, was released from psychiatric care at the Monash Medical Centre just hours before he boarded the Malaysia Airlines flight MH 128 on Wednesday 31 May.
Emergency services were called to Tullamarine Airport about 11.40pm.
Chief Commissioner Graham Ashton said on Thursday that police initially treated the situation as a counter-terrorism incident but “he’s not showing any signs of any terrorism link”.
Patrick Honan was flying to Kuala Lumpur to relocate for work and was among the first passengers to approach the man.
He was sitting in business class when he heard a female flight attended yell for help.
“I’m not a confrontational person and wouldn’t normally do anything like that, but her scream was blood-curdling,” he said.
As Mr Honan approached, the man pulled out what he thought was a knife and jabbed the object at him several times.
He and other passengers wrestled with the man and used cable ties and belts and sat on top of him to restrain him.
“We’ve seen it on the television and we know now that it wasn’t a terrorist attack, but we didn’t know that at the time,” he said.
“At the time, I wasn’t worried about a bomb, I was more worried about what I thought was a knife.”
Mr Honan said the plane had been in the air only a few minutes when the incident occurred.
Once the aircraft returned to Melbourne Airport after the man had been subdued, passengers spent more than an hour on the tarmac before they could leave the aircraft.
“It was scary, we didn’t really know what was going on, whether this was part of a terrorist attack,” he said.
“All we saw were police and emergency vehicles, eventually heavily armed police entered the plane.”
Mr Ashton said the alleged explosive device the man was carrying was actually a speaker he brought onto the plane in a backpack.
“He certainly was at the cockpit door seeking entry to the door, holding this device,” he said.
He was assessed overnight on psychological grounds and on Thursday morning was being interviewed in relation to Crimes Aviation Act offences that carried a maximum 10-year jail sentence.
He was expected to face Melbourne Magistrates’ Court later that day.
Mr Ashton said he believed the man was a voluntary psychiatric patient and did not support suggestions that there should be a mental illness blacklist.
“We want people to be voluntarily coming forward if they’re not dealing with a mental health issue,” he said.
“It can act as an agent against people coming forward.
“It doesn’t flow automatically that in-patients shouldn’t be allowed to travel.”
Premier Daniel Andrews said on Thursday that the man was studying to be a chef and was still confirming exactly what health care was provided to him.
“I can confirm that he was the holder of a current visa and he had, it would seem, made a decision to leave the country,” he said.
“That was a decision that was made between his release from care and the incident.”
Mr Andrews said there would be “a proper examination” of what led to the event.
“I think we need to be very careful about not driving people away from the treatment that they need,” he said.
“We don’t want to be stigmatising any more than mental illness already is stigmatised.”
