[FeeFee]

He flew 1st-crate to Texas

Ships self from Bx. to home

By TRACIE POWELL in Dallas and DAVE GOLDINER in New York
DAILY NEWS WRITERS


Charles McKinley in Dallas jail cell yesterday, three days after stunning his parents and flooring deliveryman by popping out of air cargo box at journey's end.

Charles McKinley wanted to fly home in the worst way.
Leaving unpaid bills and bad blood, the fast-talking Texan packed himself in a crate and shipped himself from a Bronx warehouse to his parents' Texas home.

Armed with a cell phone, McKinley, 25, completed the two-plane, 18-hour, 1,500-mile journey unscathed — but was arrested after he pried himself out of the wooden box Saturday.

"I'm just a guy who really wanted to go home," McKinley told the Daily News in a jailhouse interview. "I wish I had taken a bus. Right now, I wish I had walked out of New York.

"I would advise no one to ever do this," he told The Dallas Morning News.

Law enforcement officials questioning McKinley labeled him a potential terrorist. "I never thought that I'd have a terrorist label on me," he said, adding that he couldn't help but "break down and cry when they did."

McKinley said a friend talked him into riding along with clothes and a computer McKinley was shipping to Texas. Draped with a sheet, McKinley — who is 5-feet-8 and 170 pounds — hopped into a wooden box measuring 3-by-3 1/2 feet and 15 inches deep. He assumed it would be transported in a heated portion of a plane.

At first, McKinley said, he worried about being discovered. But he got frightened when the temperature plunged during the second of his two cargo flights.

"I was so scared," he said. "Nervous and scared."

The head of the company that unwittingly shipped McKinley said he could easily have died if the crate had been put in an unpressurized cargo hold. "He took a hell of a chance," said Richard Phillips, head of Pilot Air Freight.

McKinley was promptly jailed for 10 days on a warrant for passing a bad check, and the FBI was investigating whether he broke stowaway laws.

But District Attorney Bill Hill said he could not cite any state laws that McKinley broke. "He violated the law of stupidity, if nothing else," Hill said.

The weird tale started when someone from Metro Machine Technics of the Bronx ordered a heavy package sent to Texas.

McKinley's buddy nailed him in Friday. Shipping company officials said he used his cell phone to direct a deliveryman to the crate sitting on a corner. McKinley said he didn't drink after 11 a.m. Friday to avoid needing a toilet.

The 400-pound box was driven to Kennedy Airport, flown on a pressurized cargo plane to Fort Wayne, Ind., then on to Dallas.

The trip cost more than $500. "He could've flown first class for that," Phillips said. Metro Machine will be billed, although company President Oscar Castillo insisted he doesn't know McKinley.

Reaches the burbs

Once in Dallas, McKinley's crate was picked up by deliveryman Billy Ray Thomas and brought to his parents' well-kept suburban home.

Thomas got spooked when he spotted two eyes peering through a broken slat. He thought a body was inside, but seconds later McKinley pushed his way out. "He [nearly] turned red," McKinley recalled. "That's how scared he was." The prodigal son shook Thomas' hand and walked into his shocked parents' arms. His dad asked why he didn't take a bus.

"I went inside, took a shower and had a big drink of water," McKinley said. "Then the cops came."

Back in New York, friends warned to treat anything McKinley said with a grain of salt.

Vivian Stokes, 47, said he ripped her off for months worth of rent in her Brooklyn home and racked up thousand of dollars in credit card charges, spun tales about family wealth and said his mother had died in a tragic car crash.

McKinley's aunt Mary Carter said she spoke to the jailed stowaway's mother, Katie. "They're embarrassed. ... She's upset because her baby's in jail," Carter said.

McKinley was already making plans for when he gets out of jail. "I know once this is over with, I'll probably go right back to New York," he said.

He didn't say how.