Danny Blomeley - A grisly hijack (part two)

Transcript

They were on a rubber boat. So they hijacked a rubber boat. So obviously rubber plantations are very prominent in along the Mekong there. So they'd hijacked the boat and their objective was to get it into Vietnam… So throughout the process, they'd obviously jumped onboard the boat, hijacked it and did whatever they needed to do to get rid of everyone that was onboard the boat. And their intention was to get back into Vietnam…

We're not sure whether it was a military type led operation or whether it was just purely banditry. But banditry seemed to be more prominent. Most of the Khmer Rouge were up north of the country and I was in the extreme south. So as I said, right on the border of Cambodia, Vietnam. So it was more bandit opportunists… So  they tried to make their way through the checkpoint 2:00 AM one morning, after they'd done what they had done to the crew on board. So we knew they were coming…So, as I indicated before, the Mekong's quite wide, so they tried to sneak through about 2:00 AM one morning.

And obviously, word had travelled with what had gone on. So as I said before, you had some detachment of the police, the customs and the Cambodian Army were there as well as our-selves as a checkpoint. So yeah, about 2:00 AM one morning it kicked off, because they tried to make it through. And I think it was the customs, or it might have been the police tried to apprehend them. And yeah, it kicked off. So it woke me up pretty quickly.