3 Arrested in Mexico in Gun Case

A combination vacation and business yachting trip has turned into a nightmare for three Orange County men jailed on suspicion of gun-running during an unscheduled maintenance stop in Cozumel, off Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula.

Eugene McClung Jr., 71, owner of Newport Beach-based Certified Marine Expeditions, and two other men have been jailed since early last week after a Mexican federal prosecutor accused them of trying to smuggle two AR-15 semiautomatic rifles “for purposes of insurrection.”

The other two men are Scott McClung, 36, of Laguna Beach, the owner’s son and captain of the ship, and first mate Noah Bailey.

All three men are active in Christian missionary work, including youth excursions and development projects in Baja California organized through the charter business, said Paul Holaday, acting captain of the Rapture, which has been at anchor off Cozumel for a week.

“In the summer, we bring out churches from all over the U.S. . . . and just show them God’s creation on the ocean and below the ocean,” Holaday said. “The crew plays in a worship band and we lead worship and play music for kids. We give testimony and give life lessons out of the Bible to the students.”

Holaday said the arrests came about 18 hours after the Rapture made an unplanned stop in Cozumel on Aug. 10 for minor repairs and was boarded by the local federal prosecutor and about a dozen armed soldiers.

William Bollard, an Irvine-based lawyer representing the Orange County men, said the AR-15s--civilian versions of the military M-16--were bought legally in Florida for protection because of increased reports of open-sea piracy off the coast of Central America. The ship also was carrying several shotguns for shooting skeet over the open seas, Bollard said.

All the weapons, Holaday said, were held in a locked display case in plain view in the ship’s pilot house.

Nine other members of the sailing party, including Eugene McClung’s 72-year-old wife, Mozelle, and three of their grandchildren, were stranded aboard the 145-foot yacht after Mexican authorities confiscated their passports, Bollard said. Two of the grandchildren, ages 11 and 13, returned to California after their mother traveled to Mexico to get them. The children gave affidavits to the prosecutor’s office, Bollard said.

“They took all the passports of all the passengers, even those not under suspicion,” Bollard said from Cozumel. “They still have them detained.”

A preliminary hearing was underway Monday in which a federal magistrate is to decide whether there is sufficient evidence to hold the men for trial, Bollard said. Conviction carries prison sentences of three to eight years, he said.

Bollard said that under Mexican law, a judge has until Wednesday to formally charge the trio or order them released.

Telephone calls seeking comment from the prosecutor and the judge were not returned.

Family members said they have been distraught since learning of the detentions last week.

“You go up and down,” said Cindy Flood, daughter of Eugene and Mozelle McClung; her son, Shawn, 14, is aboard the boat.

“First you think everything is going to be OK, there are lots of people praying. Then you think, ‘Oh, my gosh, they’re in a Mexican jail,’ and you hear all these stories about innocent people in jail.”

Flood, of Long Beach, Wash., said the family has been relying on its religious faith. Initially, she said, she made reservations to fly to Cozumel but changed her mind. Her husband, Gary Flood, went instead.

The odyssey began when Eugene McClung decided to convert a business trip into a vacation for family members. He had ordered the construction of an $8-million yacht for his charter business, and he took his family and some crew members to Florida to pick up the yacht and sail it to Newport Beach.

The itinerary called for the yacht to sail from Freeport, Fla., where it was built, through the Panama Canal and along the West Coast to Newport Beach. But about 150 miles off the Yucatan Peninsula, the yacht developed problems with a water pump and purification and hydraulic systems.

“It’s a brand-new vessel, and the bugs were being worked out,” Bollard said. “They decided to get some parts in Cozumel.”

Holaday described the problems as minor but said they decided to fix them rather than work around them for the duration of the trip.

A port agent boarded the ship Aug. 11 and collected documents in advance of an inspection later by harbor officials--standard procedure when arriving in foreign ports, Holaday said.

Later that morning, the federal prosecutor showed up with a half a dozen soldiers.

“We showed them all the weapons, the shotguns and the ammo,” Holaday said. “They walked through the rest of the boat. On the way out a couple of the soldiers played Foosball. It was a real light feeling. Everybody seemed happy.

“A few hours later, they came back.”

Holaday said about a dozen armed soldiers led by the same prosecutor boarded the boat about 7 p.m. and searched it. He said the prosecutor “claimed he never saw the guns [earlier], never heard about them and that we were trying to hide them.”

The soldiers detained the captain, Scott McClung, who asked that Bailey accompany them to provide corroboration that they had informed officials of the weapons, Holaday said. Eugene McClung then insisted that he go also, since it is his boat.

Bollard said that the first night, all three men were questioned at the jail, and they told their interrogators that the boat was carrying about $10,000 for fuel, supplies and other incidentals.

Initially, Bollard said, the men were jailed but not charged. Bollard was summoned to Cozumel by the family and met with the prosecutor on Wednesday.

“During my meeting with the prosecutor, he says we can probably just take care of this, but ‘I don’t want to deal directly with you,’ ” Bollard said.

Bollard hired a local lawyer to act as a go-between, who told him that for $10,000 the three men would be freed. But Bollard said that when he arrived with the money Thursday morning, the deal was off because news of the arrests had been leaked to the local newspaper, which described the three men as drug traffickers.

“Now it’s just a lying contest,” Bollard said. “They’re saying we didn’t tell them about the guns. We’re saying just the opposite.”

Researcher Greg Brosnan in Mexico City contributed to this report.