Dutch tourist on flight to Detroit says he jumped on suspect to ‘try to save the plane’

Dutch tourist says he stopped Detroit plane attack

DETROIT — A Dutch tourist said Saturday he heard a pop, saw smoke and climbed over seats to stop a man from trying to blow up a Northwest Airlines flight in Detroit.

“I didn’t think. I just went over there to try to save the plane,” Jasper Schuringa of Amsterdam told CNN.

As passengers on Flight 253 screamed “fire, fire” on Friday, Schuringa said he figured the suspect was “trying to blow up the plane.”

He said he jumped over seats and crossed the aisle before extinguishing the fire with his hands and searching Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab for explosives.

“When you hear a pop on a plane, you’re awake,” Schuringa said.

He said Mutallab didn’t struggle and was silent as other passengers and crew responded.

“We took him to first class … stripped him and contained him to make sure he had no more weapons, no more bombs,” said Schuringa, whose right wrist and fingertips were bandaged to protect burns. He spoke to CNN from Miami where he was on vacation.

The White House said it believed it was an attempted act of terrorism and stricter security measures were quickly imposed on airline travel.

Schuringa said until the pop, there was nothing about Muttalab’s behavior that stirred suspicions on the Amsterdam-to-Detroit flight.

He praised flight attendants and fellow passengers — “they’re also heroes.”