‘Absolutely Crazed’ Captor : Hijack Survivors Return With Memories of Horror

More than 100 passengers of Pan Am Flight 73 were home today, some with bandages or other grim reminders of the hijacking that ended in a burst of gunfire and grenades.

Families and friends crowded New York’s Kennedy International Airport late Sunday to embrace 112 survivors of the ill-fated jetliner that was seized Friday night by terrorists in Karachi, Pakistan.

Describing the passengers’ ordeal, Vidya Dehejia, a professor of art history at Columbia University, said today on ABC’s “Good Morning America” that one of the hijackers walked around with a grenade in each hand, continually pulling the pin out of one of them as he paced silently up and down the back section of the plane.

“He didn’t have to say anything,” Dehejia said. “His eyes were absolutely crazed. . . . And you weren’t going to do anything with a man like that around.”

‘A Certain Relief’

“I actually felt a certain relief when the hijackers finally opened fire,” said 48-year-old Jay Grantier when he arrived home to Colorado on Sunday night. “We knew that something had to happen.”

“The hijackers were just firing randomly at us. I had never been fired at before. It seemed interminable,” said Grantier, of Parker, Colo., who said he just wanted to shower, shave and catch up on his sleep.

“When the shooting went off, I just tried to escape with the kids,” said another survivor, Zeba Hamit of Duncan, Okla., a mother of two.

Mohammed Tariq of Cleveland, who was on the plane with his wife, Somina, sat in a wheelchair with his right hand and right leg bandaged.

Tariq was hurt leaping from the plane, a move he said saved his life. After the plane’s lights went out, he said, passengers “were shouting, crying and yelling--and I just jumped.”

‘Not Human Beings’

“They (the terrorists) were animals. They were not human beings,” said Tariq, his wife’s arms around him.

Catherine Dumas of Lafayette Township, N.J., had only one worry during the crisis: “for the people who were worrying about me.”

“My father is elderly. He has a bad heart,” said Dumas. She said she was thinking, “Damn you if I go home to a father who’s sick or dead.”

Some families were upset over the lack of information they received about the fate of loved ones.

In Huntington Beach, Calif., the family of an American shot to death by the terrorists learned Sunday evening that the man’s grandmother also was dead.

Relatives of Rajesh Kumar, 29, said they were angry that they were not told for three days that Kumurben Patel, 80, also had been killed. They also were furious that she had been cremated without authorization.

“We are very upset with the way the authorities are handling the case,” said Di Patel, 29, Kumar’s cousin. “Somebody is hiding something from us.”