Call it a takedown on the tarmac.
Dramatic video obtained by CTV News Toronto appears to shows a mechanic chasing a baggage handler, suspected of smuggling drugs, through tunnels in the secure area at Pearson International Airport.
The baggage handler is then seeing ducking into what looks like a luggage cart. He hides there for a while, but Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) officers carrying flashlights pull back the curtains to find him.
The suspect tries to flee again and then appears to be seen being taken down.
All of the video was entered into evidence in a Brampton Superior Court case, where the handler, identified as 52-year-old Nigel Welsh, was found guilty of drug trafficking and sentenced to nine years in prison in January.
It was a case that even the presiding justice found extraordinary.
“Mr. Welsh’s flight after being discovered caused what was, by all appearances, a major security incident at an international airport. An importing suspect was essentially running around the secure airside area of the airport,” Justice Mohammed Rahman wrote.
In the video entered as exhibits, the baggage handler can be seen at all angles starting his day like any other in October of 2021. At Pearson, as in most airports, baggage handlers are the employees or contracted by the airlines.
He can be seen passing into the secure area of the airport and then is one of many handlers that unload luggage from a Sunwing plane travelling from Jamaica.
The court heard that he stuck around near the plane after everyone was gone and was discovered in the cargo hold by a mechanic.
Security video shows him leaving the plane with a backpack – about the same time as the mechanic was calling for his manager.
The next time the man shows up is in a chase through the tunnels, with the mechanic in hot pursuit.
“The mechanic lost Mr. Welsh during the chase. During the chase, Mr. Welsh dropped a knapsack containing the drugs that he had retrieved from the plane,” writes Justice Rahman.
Inside that knapsack were cellphones and nine one-kilogram bricks of cocaine and a 780-gram bag of cannabis, altogether worth a maximum of $1 million, the justice wrote.
Officers started searching through all of Terminal 3.
Another video shows people with flashlights going through the luggage cart, and Welsh bursts out, tries to flee again, but trips on a concrete barrier.
That’s when a CBSA officer collars him, the judgement says.
In court, Welsh maintained he wasn’t the man carrying the bag, saying he was just hiding in the luggage carts because he had lost his airport ID and he was worried he would get in trouble.
Prosecutors pointed out the phone they found with the bag had accounts with his e-mail addresses. A security vest that had been discarded also had the initials “N.W.” on it.
Former Toronto detective Mark Mendelson, who watched the video, said Welsh was behaving like someone in a panic.
“They want to hide. But there’s not a lot of places to hide in the apron of an airport,” Mendelson said.
And the airport is not a place for a drug smuggler to make a mistake, he added.
“We’re talking about a premise that is laden with security cameras. They’re everywhere at Pearson Airport. So it’s high risk,” said Mendelson.
Baggage handlers at Pearson caught before
Last year, the RCMP charged two baggage handlers with switching tabs on bags to slip in about $150,000 worth of drugs.
And in 2019, two Sunwing employees were charged in a drug ring operating out of Pearson.
Sunwing Airlines became a subsidiary of Westjet last year. Westjet didn’t respond to CTV News Toronto’s request for comment.
Welsh appealing 9-year sentence
Welsh’s lawyer, meanwhile, said he is appealing and is out on bail now.
The court heard Welsh, who was born in Jamaica, was abused as a child and moved from the British Virgin Islands to Canada in 2013 for a better life and to avoid “the prevalence of anti-Black racism.”
He is a father and has a Canadian child, however the sentence of nine years will likely mean he will be removed to Jamaica after his sentence, the judge said.
Mendelson said it was notable that the case didn’t address anyone he was likely working for, or the organization that ultimately brought the drugs to Canada, saying that Welsh was likely a small part in it.
“In that world of drug smuggling, if you’re that person, that’s what you have been paid for. You’re going to take that fall,” he said.
