The Region : Jet Hijacker Gets 20-Year Prison Term

A Sacramento mother of five was sentenced to 20 years in prison for helping her boyfriend hijack a jetliner to Cuba in 1972. Los Angeles Chief U.S. District Judge Manuel Real imposed the term on Ida McCray, who was convicted of air piracy May 5. Real bluntly rejected McCray’s appeal for probation, saying he was haunted by the fear in the eyes of the passengers and crew members who testified at her trial. “I don’t know if you saw the fear in the eyes of those women who testified,” Real told McCray’s attorney, Dennis Cunningham. “It was the same 15 years later.” Real convicted McCray, 36, after a one-day, non-jury trial, finding she trained a pistol on terrified passengers during the Jan. 7, 1972, hijacking of Pacific Southwest Airlines Flight 902 to Havana. She and her boyfriend, Allen Gordon Sims, boarded the plane in San Francisco and commandeered the flight just before it landed in Los Angeles, where the passengers were allowed off the plane.