Peel Regional Police Thursday night laid charges against a Toronto man who terrified fellow airline passengers by trying to open a door midflight over the Dominican Republic.

Peel investigators flew to Punta Cana, where the plane made an unscheduled stop, and charged Adrian Worrell, 33, of Toronto with endangering the safety of an aircraft in flight, mischief endangering life and several assaults, a police spokesperson said.

Police returned with the prisoner Thursday night.

The man is charged in connection with events on Skyservice Airlines flight 828, which originated Tuesday in Grenada and stopped in Barbados, bringing the passenger list to 202. It reached Toronto one day late on New Year's Eve because of the emergency.

Problems started with an argument over legroom, witnesses said. The man began hitting the fully reclined seat in front of him, after the plane had reached cruising altitude.

"I heard a loud banging," passenger Beresford Moseley of Barbados, seated five rows ahead of the disturbance, recounted after arriving at Toronto's Pearson airport.

"The flight attendant told him to stop," said Shery Henry of Toronto, who also turned around to look. "All of a sudden he got up. He started running up the aisle, then he went from side to side trying to open the emergency exit doors.

"He tried both," Henry recalled. "He said, `God sent me. I'm supposed to kill myself and take you with me.' I started screaming and crying."

A flight attendant called for help. Six to eight men tackled the man, the witnesses said.

Two male flight attendants and the passengers tied him with his own belt and with straps used to secure babies.

"He said, `I like the pain. Give me more pain,'." Henry recalled.

"A flight attendant told me and others, `If he gets away from them, don't let him get to the flight deck,'." Moseley said. "We got to tackle him next."

But it was over. The man was immobilized.

Half an hour later, the plane made an unscheduled landing at the eastern tip of Dominican Republic in Punta Cana.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

"The medics met him at the front door with a syringe," Moseley said. "Then they took him off the plane."

A Skyservice spokesperson said the door was never at risk of opening and the man was taken into custody.