Fugitive fighting extradition

KALISPELL, Mont. – A Canadian man who spent 24 years as a fugitive plans to fight extradition to Montana, where he faces a negligent homicide charge, a police spokesman in Texas said.

Jaroslaw “Jerry” Ambrozuk, 43, was arrested Wednesday at his Plano, Texas, home on a warrant for the Aug. 22, 1982, death of Dianne Babcock, 18.

Authorities said Ambrozuk, then 19, and Babcock were supposed to have been flying from Penticton, B.C., to Vancouver, B.C., when he somehow veered off course into Montana.

Authorities say the diversion may have been intentional.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police “tipped us Ambrozuk had called a friend and told him they had an eloping scheme – that they were going to crash the plane in a lake and were going to disappear and live their life in America,” Flathead County Sheriff Jim Dupont told the Canadian Press.

Ambrozuk swam away from the plane and Babcock drowned when it sank. He vanished without reporting the crash to authorities.

At the time of his arrest, Ambrozuk was living under the assumed name Michael Lee Smith and was self-employed in computer software work, court records said.