"I bombed in Miami, Johnny. Tough crowd!"
Posted on 12/08/2005 12:21:37 PM PST by Rennes Templar
A passenger on Flight 924 gives his account of the shooting and says Rigoberto Alpizar never claimed to have a bomb
By SIOBHAN MORRISSEY/MIAMI
At least one passenger aboard American Airlines Flight 924 maintains the federal air marshals were a little too quick on the draw when they shot and killed Rigoberto Alpizar as he frantically attempted to run off the airplane shortly before take-off.
"I don't think they needed to use deadly force with the guy," says John McAlhany, a 44-year-old construction worker from Sebastian, Fla. "He was getting off the plane." McAlhany also maintains that Alpizar never mentioned having a bomb.
"I never heard the word 'bomb' on the plane," McAlhany told TIME in a telephone interview. "I never heard the word bomb until the FBI asked me did you hear the word bomb. That is ridiculous." Even the authorities didn't come out and say bomb, McAlhany says. "They asked, 'Did you hear anything about the b-word?'" he says. "That's what they called it."
When the incident began McAlhany was in seat 24C, in the middle of the plane. "[Alpizar] was in the back," McAlhany says, "a few seats from the back bathroom. He sat down." Then, McAlhany says, "I heard an argument with his wife. He was saying 'I have to get off the plane.' She said, 'Calm down.'"
Alpizar took off running down the aisle, with his wife close behind him. "She was running behind him saying, 'He's sick. He's sick. He's ill. He's got a disorder," McAlhany recalls. "I don't know if she said bipolar disorder [as one witness has alleged]. She was trying to explain to the marshals that he was ill. He just wanted to get off the plane."
McAlhany described Alpizar as carrying a big backpack and wearing a fanny pack in front. He says it would have been impossible for Alpizar to lie flat on the floor of the plane, as marshals ordered him to do, with the fanny pack on. "You can't get on the ground with a fanny pack," he says. "You have to move it to the side."
By the time Alpizar made it to the front of the airplane, the crew had ordered the rest of the passengers to get down between the seats. "I didn't see him get shot," he says. "They kept telling me to get down. I heard about five shots."
McAlhany says he tried to see what was happening just in case he needed to take evasive action. "I wanted to make sure if anything was coming toward me and they were killing passengers I would have a chance to break somebody's neck," he says. "I was looking through the seats because I wanted to see what was coming.
"I was on the phone with my brother. Somebody came down the aisle and put a shotgun to the back of my head and said put your hands on the seat in front of you. I got my cell phone karate chopped out of my hand. Then I realized it was an official."
In the ensuing events, many of the passengers began crying in fear, he recalls. "They were pointing the guns directly at us instead of pointing them to the ground," he says "One little girl was crying. There was a lady crying all the way to the hotel."
McAlhany said he saw Alpizar before the flight and is absolutely stunned by what unfolded on the airplane. He says he saw Alpizar eating a sandwich in the boarding area before getting on the plane. He looked normal at that time, McAlhany says. He thinks the whole thing was a mistake: "I don't believe he should be dead right now."
A plane on the ground isn't going to become a flying missile.
Looking back at it, you didn't.
You know what is silly? You scrolling down this thread, stating your OPINION as fact, all the while you're thrusting YOUR ideas about HOW or WHY he should/would have done it, all the while chastizing the rest of us for doing just that, as if you had the market cornered on the facts.
BTW, for all YOU know, if he had had a bomb, his plan could have beento detonate it when the plane was flying, his wife confronted him on the plane and was going to expose him, so he ran off the plane.
See how that works?
"I bombed in Miami, Johnny. Tough crowd!"
Now you're wrong: the "chased" him into First Class AFTER he ran down the aisle saying he had a bomb in his bag.
Yesterday's news. Literally. I saw it yesterday in a story that was hand-wringing about "proper training".
That's what I thought. I would have thought I'd have seen something if one of the witnesses had verified that claim.
Sounds like she's trolling to be a paid witness in a lawsuit.
Now that you mention it, he does!
I was thinking today about this new "fad"...........do you think that people who find themselves in situations like that immediately begin to think about what they will say when they are interviewed? Have we come to that (remembering that some of the students at Columbine called CNN!)?
Then he would have just detonated then and there.
Why can't we just go with what actually happened rather than trying to inject silly hypothetical that run contrary to the information we have now?
The marshals were presented with a tough situation and they dealt with it the only way they reasonably could. In the heat of all of this they had just a split second to make a judgment call - thoughts about the plane coming from Colombia aren't going through their mind.
Rlm-- Rigoberto Alpizar had already left the plane when the two air marshals shot him. While the air marshals claim he "had run up and down the plane's aisle yelling, 'I have a bomb in my bag.'" there has been no report by a passenger to confirm that--if he was YELLING that he had a bomb, wouldn't just about all the passengers have heard that? Instead they report that his wife was chasing after Alpizar, "'She was chasing after him,' said fellow passenger Alan Tirpak. 'She was just saying her husband was sick, her husband was sick.'"
Well, that is an out and out lie; everybody they interviewed yesterday said that.
Period.
Read the post I was responding to. That person's theory is that he was running off the plane to get more time to detonate the bomb.
My point was that he was only chased because he was making a commotion that was perceived as threatening. He wasn't being chased because he was caught in the act of trying to detonate the bomb.
Are you a terrorit?
Are you bipolar?
Because you sure as stating that as FACT, when it's nothing but YOUR opinion.
Why can't we just go with what actually happened rather than trying to inject silly hypothetical that run contrary to the information we have now?
Of course, I'm sure you mean the facts as YOU think they are, right?
Various witnesses have reported sing the man run up the aisle waving his arms. Since when does that constitute a crackpot theory? You seem to be going out of your way to find a reason to claim the air marshals were wrong.
I didn't hear any passengers report that he said he had bomb.
He was being chased because he ran away from two air marshalls who told him to lie down and he didn't.
Almost to a person the people on that plane said that very thing yesterday.
"A plane on the ground isn't going to become a flying missile."
I agree. Any explosive device would only be harmful to the passengers, crew and any auxilliary personnel around the plane. However, if I were on or around the plane...that would be threatening enough for me.
Again, please read my posts and understand them before attempting to respond.
I have written over and over in this thread that I am not second guessing the marshals. I have said many times that given the information we currently have, they were put in a difficult situation and they responded in the only way they could.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.