A father stranded in Turks and Caicos after he accidentally carried ammunition in his luggage during a family vacation has told DailyMail.com of the hellish ordeal as he faces up to 12 years in prison for the ‘honest mistake’. Bryan Hagerich, 39, a former baseball pro, was arrested at the airport on the Caribbean islands in February after a five-day vacation with his wife, Ashley, and their two young children. In a moving interview with DailyMail.com, Bryan and Ashley, 41, shared their ordeal amid a spate of arrests of American men who accidentally traveled to Turks and Caicos with ammunition in their luggage. All face lengthy jail terms under strict firearms laws in the British overseas territory. Customs officials found a box of 20 rounds of hunting ammunition in Bryan’s luggage during a random check before his family’s return flight to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He had accidentally left the bullets in his bag before the vacation. Bryan was charged with a firearms offense and held for more than a week in a grim island jail. He was then released on bail and has since spent 76 days on the island anxiously awaiting his sentencing. The couple said the traumatic ordeal has had a profound impact on their two young children, Palmer, four, and Caroline, six, who ask every day: ‘When is daddy coming home?’. Speaking from the Airbnb where he has lived during his time on bail, Bryan also told of his desperate hope for leniency from the courts so that he can board the next flight back to his family.
“We were just leaving for our vacation and I was getting ready for work, and we had a lot going on,” she said. “I just didn’t even think about it, so I guess it slipped through the cracks.”
The family had been planning to visit Bryan’s family in Florida after their Turks and Caicos vacation, but instead they found themselves stranded in a foreign country where they knew no one. They were able to arrange for Ashley and the children to fly back home while Bryan remained behind to deal with the legal fallout.
“It was just such an emotional rollercoaster,” Ashley said. “We had all these plans, and now we’re just stuck here, not knowing what’s going to happen.”
Bryan spent a week in jail before being released on bail, but he has since been forced to miss work and other important events while he waits for his court date. He is now hoping that the judge will show some mercy and hand down a lenient sentence so that he can return home to his family as soon as possible.
“I’m just an ordinary guy who made a mistake, but I don’t know how much longer I can hold up,” Bryan said. “I have to be here for work, but then there are all these other things – weddings, graduations – that I won’t be able to attend.”
We’re just trying to hold it together as a family while everything else is falling apart.”
