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If You're Going To Break Your Wife Out Of Prison With a Helicopter, Don't Do This…

By News Sep 30, 2020 | 7:59 AM

If you plan on hijacking a helicopter and using it to try to break your wife out of prison, it would be not booking said helicopter in your own name. In Belgium, 24-year-old Mike Gielen threatened the helicopter’s pilot using a replica handgun, then diverted the helicopter in mid-air as he sought to spring 27-year-old Kristel Appelt from Berkendaal women’s prison in south Brussels, where she was being held on suspicion of murdering an ex-boyfriend.

The helicopter circled the prison several times but Gielen’s plan was foiled as the pilot was unable to land within the courtyard. While the helicopter flew over the prison the inmates cheered and waved, but Gielen became nauseous and had to put his head out of the helicopter five times to throw up. The pilot was then instructed to fly to Hélécine, a town south of the Belgian capital, where a getaway car was waiting in a parking lot.

Gielen was later found with his 50-year-old adoptive father after detectives found he had used his own name when booking the helicopter at Deurne airport. Gielen, a convicted drug smuggler, met and married his wife in the mixed-gender Hasselt prison last year.

Source: The Guardian