Posted on 12/07/2005 4:43:31 PM PST by ConservativeMind
MIAMI (AP) - An agitated passenger who claimed to have a bomb in his backpack was shot and killed by a federal air marshal Wednesday after he bolted frantically from a jetliner that was about to take off, officials said. No bomb was found.
The man, identified as Rigoberto Alpizar, a 44-year-old U.S. citizen, was gunned down on a jetway just before the American Airlines plane was about to leave for Orlando, near his home in Maitland.
It was the first time since the Sept. 11 attacks that an air marshal had shot at anyone, Homeland Security Department spokesman Brian Doyle said.
According to a witness, the man frantically ran down the aisle of the Boeing 757, flailing his arms, while his wife tried to explain that he was mentally ill and had not taken his medication.
The passenger indicated there was a bomb in his bag and was confronted by air marshals but ran off the aircraft, Doyle said. The marshals went after him and ordered him to get down on the ground, but he did not comply and was shot when he apparently reached into the bag, Doyle said.
The plane, Flight 924, had arrived in Miami from Medellin, Colombia, just after noon, and the shooting occurred shortly after 2 p.m. as the plane was about to take off for Orlando with the man and 119 other passengers and crew, American spokesman Tim Wagner said. Alpizar had arrived in Miami earlier in the day from Ecuador, authorities said.
After the shooting, investigators spread passengers' bags on the tarmac and let dogs sniff them for explosives, and bomb squad members blew up at least two bags.
No bomb was found, said James E. Bauer, agent in charge of the Federal Air Marshals field office in Miami. He said there was no reason to believe there was any connection to terrorists.
The concourse where the shooting took place was shut down for a half-hour, but the rest of the airport continued operating, officials said.
Mary Gardner, a passenger aboard the Orlando-bound flight, told WTVJ-TV in Miami that the man ran down the aisle from the rear of the plane. "He was frantic, his arms flailing in the air," she said. She said a woman followed, shouting, "My husband! My husband!"
Gardner said she heard the woman say her husband was bipolar - a mental illness also known as manic-depression - and had not had his medication.
Gardner said four to five shots were fired. She could not see the shooting.
After the shooting, police boarded the plane and told the passengers to put their hands on their heads, Gardner said.
"It was quite scary," she told the TV station via a cell phone. "They wouldn't let you move. They wouldn't let you get anything out of your bag."
There were only 33 air marshals at the time of the Sept. 11 attacks. The Bush administration hired thousands more afterward, but the exact number is classified.
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Associated Press writers Mark Sherman and Lara Jakes Jordan in Washington contributed to this report.
i went and checked with a dr friend of mine who says she never advises mentally ill people to fly, in fact she advises their families of the danger of such a person flying. 1st they can panic and get out of control easily. 2nd they can get manic & not have control over their emotions. 3rd many will drink with their meds and that may cause a reaction. she did say most families dont pay attention to her warnings. my other thought is this..so the wife is saying the husband didnt take his meds and is mental. hmmmm how was the air marshall to know if this was a true fact? she could have been lying, there could have been a bomb and plenty of dead people. are we forgetting 9/11 already? i think i wont fly anymore, i was upset they were letting passengers take more things on planes again.why dont people make up their minds..do we want protection or do we want to be killed ? id rather see 1 dead kook then a plane full of innocent people.
To be fair, though, this seems like a much cleaner kill than the Brazilian in London. That was a massive error by the London Met.
Only the mentally ill that go screaming down ailes and into airport concourses that they have a bomb.
Maybe someone should have taken the time to jump on his back an interview him.
The only difference between this and if he did it while in the air is he probably would have had about 20 knives from first class sticking out of his back.
And, as stated in another thread, didn't the 9/11 hijackers say that they had bombs to keep the passengers seated?
The shooting by the Air Marshall appears to be proper.....I was pointing out your statement was ridiculous.....
If you read my post with any more than a sophmoric approach you would have noted two points.
1. I neither condemed nor praised the shooting.
2. I pointed out the obvious absurbity of the statement by Freeper, "ConservativeMind".
Your name calling only diminishes yourself and has no place on this forum.....
Too late, I already have....
The dominant leftist media are trying to make this a bad thing.
They want to hurt Bush. (obvious)
They are too stupid to admit that the public thinks that the marshalls did the only thing that they could have done under the circumstances.
I hate the MSM!
If you read my post with any more than a sophmoric approach you would have noted two points.
1. I neither condemed nor praised the shooting.
2. I pointed out the obvious absurbity of the statement by Freeper, "ConservativeMind".
Your name calling only diminishes yourself and has no place on this forum.....
If you read my post with any more than a sophmoric approach you would have noted two points.
1. I neither condemed nor praised the shooting.
2. I pointed out the obvious absurbity of the statement by Freeper, "ConservativeMind".
Nor by all latter accounts was this a "Suicide by Cop" as you stated. This was a mentally ill individual whose actions and behavior all but necessitated the FAM's to use lethal force. The After Incident report will be the final chapter on this sad case.
The only issue that was "wrongheaded' was your inability to properly read a post and interpret the text....
I forgot. Dumb me. The man who was killed has an HISPANIC surname (hint: affirmative action, minority set-aside, race-norming, automatic victim status).
That is why the MSM are trying to make this a bad thing.
LOL, so mentally SANE people commit suicide? This was clearly suicide by cop. The AM gave the insane man chance after chance. Unable to connect with reality, the insane man died in a proxy suicide.
As for your comments, both to me and ConservativeMind, well the best suggestion I can make is that you work on your writing skills. Oh, yeah and your reading comprehension. ConservativeMind suggested NOTHING like you seem to think he did - neither implicitly nor explicitly. You choose to misread what others post and then act like a limo liberal - supercillious and self-superior.
LOL....mentally unstable people commit suicide (sometimes by cop).....generally, they know right from wrong.....
Some are even allowed to post on FR.......so don't forget to take your Lithium....
Nothing in my statement was absurd.
I am praising the shooting (it was absolutely reasonable and nothing should be done to the AM) and I do believe that the mentally unstable be held accountable for anything they do.
The same holds for drunk drivers who kill someone. I believe it should be tried as premeditated murder, as they purposely gave up their ability to be "reasonable". Same goes for rapes done while drunk or on drugs. There are no "mitigating" factors. You chose to give up your ability to think on purpose, and you should suffer any and all consequences for performing those offenses against another.
I also believe in a torture penalty.
"If you read my post with any more than a sophmoric approach you would have noted two points.
1. I neither condemed nor praised the shooting.
2. I pointed out the obvious absurbity of the statement by Freeper, "ConservativeMind".
Your name calling only diminishes yourself and has no place on this forum....."
As said, Idjit, if you cannot present your ideas of sarcasm in a coherent manner, you are indeed the fool for believing yourself a wannabe pontificator.
ABTW, learning to use spell check would be a start.
Or just lease a few planes and run them as charter flights out of any airports they choose. If they just wanted to bring down a commercial flight, a jihardist group could have a few members join the TSA (which won't "discriminate" against those with Middle Eastern backgrounds) and put the bombs in the luggage while doing the bag screening.
Whatever.
That's pretty extreme....
Torture for prisoners...death for mental illness....
Sorry, I believe that the ultimate penalty should be infrequent and carefully applied....
Now, the FAM officers did exactly what they were trained to do and they executed their duties properly and diligently. But the issue then and the issue now is should federal officers equipped and geared for a limnited response be used within the general public.
A local PD guy is trained and equipped (non-lethal)to handle a situation like what happened on the American airlines flight. The end result may have been a takedown and not a death of a mentally ill individual.
We need to learn from this shooting and adapt so we are not killing non-terrorists......
These poor FAM's will live with this the rest of their lives. They will relive this in their dreams.....Been their done that....not as a law enforcement but in other capacities....mine were fully legitimate as the officers but that does change the end result.
I'm not entirely certain that she will ... or at least not successfully. The other passengers say that she was overtly apologetic right after the shooting ... saying that she understood and that she should not have forced him onto the plane in hsi condtion.
It's not a slam dunk. But there is tangible cause to think she knew she should not have been on that plane in his condition.
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