Posted on 10/06/2001 1:56:53 PM PDT by Fighting Irish
DEMING, N.M. (AP) - Authorities were searching Saturday for a man who held a knife to the neck of a pilot and attempted to hijack a medical transport plane before fleeing a tiny airport in southern New Mexico. FBI supervisory agent Doug Beldon said Friday night's incident appeared to be isolated and unrelated to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center. No arrests have been made.
The University of New Mexico Hospital plane arrived at the Deming Municipal Airport around 9:45 p.m. to transport a baby from an area hospital. Paramedics had gone to get the child and the pilot stayed behind.
A man entered the back door of the plane and put a knife to the neck of the pilot and said, "Let's fly," Beldon said.
"It was very dark," he said. "The pilot certainly felt the knife to her neck."
The man was carrying a knife and a radio or police scanner. He was also wearing dark clothes that included a black hood with the eyes cut out.
The pilot started the King Air twin turbo-prop plane and headed down the runway when the back door opened and made a loud crashing noise. The pilot veered off the runway, Beldon said.
"Just after she veered off the runway, he struck her in the head three times with the radio device," he said. He said the man periodically repeated a word that sounded like "salama." Beldon could not identify the language of the word or give the exact spelling.
"He did speak with a foreign accent," which did not seem to be Spanish, Beldon said.
Stinky toes? (I'm beginning to worry about some of our NJ FReepers...)
I've been reading the above sentence pretty often lately. Maybe some of the weird incidents lately aren't related, but it's enough to make me wonder.
This is what I was thinking, too. There sure are a lot of weird things going on that are "isolated and unrelated" lately.
See, these episodes are isolated, nothing to see here, folks. Greyhound buses are safe, don't worry...
When this fails, and the backlash hits, some pi$$ed off Americans are going to remember who fell for it.
Your are a genious, too....Where's ALamogirl when you need her?
This certainly would not compare with the damage caused by a 757 will a full fuel load. However, the reason for taking this small plane may not be the same as the larger planes.
All kidding aside -- what would someone want this type of plane for?
Boy some people just can't be serious for one minute.
THANK GOODNESS!
LOL
We need to be thinking what these targets might be and keeping our eyes open. The public at large definitely tends to take things more at face value. If a Freeper sees a middle east looking type taking pictures of a chemical plant, we don't assume that Achmed is just a foreign student taking tourist pictures. I know that I would be making a citizen's arrest on his ass, and he better have more than a boxcutter.
I agree that these planes and such could be crashed into something == particularly if explosives happen to have been brought onboard.
Yeah. I should've been more specific. The bulletin about the missing truck was issued from a New Mexico FBI office.
I definitely agree with that; I just used the easy example for brevity. If I see ANYBODY doing anything strange around a chemical plant, it will be checked out (I know that there are many blue-eyed Balkan Muslims). A middle east type would just draw attention sooner - ACLU be damned. Stay safe.
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