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Houlton border standoff involved 2 brothers driving gasoline jug-filled car: report

Canadian brothers Bailey and Damien Roy were reportedly freed by a judge Friday. 'Terrorist' hoax charges were dropped and the pair each pleaded guilty to obstruction.

WOODSTOCK, New Brunswick — Last fall's six-hour standoff at the Houlton-Woodstock border crossing reportedly involved two brothers in a car filled with gasoline jugs.

Their plan: to drive to Mexico without filling up, a report says.

CBC reports Bailey Roy, 21, and Damien Roy, 22, both pleaded guilty Friday inside a Woodstock, New Brunswick, courtroom to a charge of obstruction. Charges of committing a hoax related to terrorist activity were initially filed in November but later dropped by state prosecutors.

The Roys were sentenced to three months, Global News reports. But accounting for time already served, they were released by the judge.

Credit: John Slipp
The 1967 Buick Skylark at the border on Oct. 26, 2018

Both were taken into custody at about 4 p.m. on Oct. 26, 2018, by New Brunswick RCMP, part of Canada's federal police force.

Six hours prior, at about 10 a.m., RCMP had responded to a car that had stopped in the area between border crossings and the two people inside refused to communicate with officials. It wasn't until the car began driving toward the U.S. border that U.S. border patrol officials took them in.

Bailey Roy, who lives in Halifax, New Brunswick, was returned to Canadian custody on Oct. 28. Damien Roy, a resident of Middle Sackville, New Brunswick, was initially kept in U.S. custody. This was due to Damien claiming asylum in the U.S., CBC reports, resulting in a month-long detention.

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CBC reports the brothers bought a blue 1967 Buick Skylark on Oct. 25, 2018, and without legal documents for the car planned to drive it from New Brunswick, Canada, to Mexico without stopping at any U.S. gas stations.

The Roy brothers had no GPS, passports or IDs, CBC reports. They planned to use paper maps to enter Maine illegally using a road without a border checkpoint. That's until they found themselves at the border crossing.

The car's back seat and truck were filled with 21 jugs of gasoline.

State prosecutor Brian Munn told CBC that both brothers claimed they had no intention of committing a terrorist act and no political motivations.

"To use the words of Bailey Roy himself during an interview, essentially what they had done was 'stupid,'" Munn told CBC.

Munn said the brothers' car is still in Maine.

Previously, the Roy brothers went missing for more than a month in 2015.

The then 19- and 18-year-olds, who at the time both lived in the Halifax neighborhood of Clayton Park, were reported missing to police Oct. 4. One apparently returned to the home on Fairfax Drive on Oct. 6 but left.

Forty days later, Halifax police found the pair 5 miles away in Bedford.

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