HONOLULU (AP) -- A man who set a sport utility vehicle ablaze at Maui's Kahului Airport last year has been sentenced to two and a half years in prison.
Paul Blatchley was also ordered on Monday to pay $5,454 in restitution for the incident.
No one was hurt when Blatchley drove a borrowed Dodge Durango loaded with three 5-gallon cans filled with gasoline toward the airport's ticket counters on Feb. 29, 2004, and set it on fire.
But the event shut down the airport for several hours and forced hundreds of passengers to change their travel plans.
The airport also suffered property damage and law enforcement officers were forced to spend time investigating the matter to determine whether it was an act of terrorism.
Blatchley, 54, of Haiku told U.S. District Court Judge Susan Oki Mollway that he was ''very sorry'' and said he owed everyone in Hawaii a ''deep apology.''
Blatchley had pleaded guilty in April to disrupting the airport's operations, an offense punishable by a maximum of 20 years in prison.
Defense attorney Jane Kimmel said Blatchley acted like a man crying for help, not someone intent on hurting others.
Blatchley, a dairy farmer from Massachusetts who ran a botanical garden on Maui, chose an area in the airport that was not very busy and repeatedly sounded his horn so that people would get out of his way, Kimmel said.
After setting the car afire and getting out, Blatchley shouted to people to stay back because he wanted to die and did not want anyone else to get hurt, she added.
''These are acts of a man suicidal, not homicidal,'' Kimmel said. She said Blatchley had already served enough time in prison during the 16 months since the fire and asked that he be sentenced to home confinement if further punishment was necessary.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Wes Porter asked for a sentence in the low to middle end of the guidelines calling for between three and four years behind bars.
Porter said the gasoline cans presented a serious danger, and said if they had exploded, ''telling people to move away wouldn't have mattered a whole lot.''
Mollway said Blatchley would be credited with the 16 months he has already spent behind bars. She said Blatchley could be released in nine or 10 months if he has a record of good behavior.
