I have a balm! I have a balm!
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."
That's a valid point, but it doesn't really come into play in a case like this. This conservative has said from the beginning that eliminating all air marshals and permitting passengers to carry firearms on airplanes is the best way to prevent another 9/11-type attack.
and as he lay wounded, he manages to push the button and the bomb goes off, and people would be saying he shoulda been shot dead..
amazing how hindsight is 20/20 with people..
This guy is full of BS.
Did the sky marshalls have CCWs for their belt mounted shotguns?
/sarc
"One little girl was crying. There was a lady crying all the way to the hotel."
You.. You don't mean they were FRIGHTENED? Do you?
That's it then. No more air marshals from now on.
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."
Umm, ok dumbass... it might have been UNCOMFORTABLE to lie on top of the fanny pack, but you bet your ass I WOULD if an air marshall was ordering me to & had a gun pointed at me!
What is also predictable is that the MSM will use this phenomenon to try to try and convict those agents.
Maybe the stewardess was about to put Gigli on as the inflight movie, and the guy was pointing out that it was a bomb.
Is that an odd thing to say??
susie
Right after he got off the phone with a lawyer!
What agents of the state (the air marshalls)? and how are they wrong?
susie
Not just an airplane. ANYWHERE. In fact, the threat is more likely elsewhere, as this incidnet happened on the secure side of an airport, where the PAX have supposed to have gone through TSA screening. More likely a person at a Greyhound station to have a bomb, than a person on the secure side of an airport.
I'd also say that the LEO need not be federal, and in fact, that even a permitted civilian might have a duty to kill a person making a credible threat to detonate a bomb. One might argue what constitutes "credible," and to that I'd say, "have a package of any type and assert that it contains a bomb."
I'll have the blonde?
I thought it was an odd remark. It would make me very suspicious.
What upsets me about this is that we seem to be so efficient with our citizens and inefficient with the Arab Muslim terrorists.
Our authorities were warned about the 911 hijackers by private citizens and the FBI (Rowley, as much as I dislike her) and did nothing.
There's Able Danger.
Yesterday, the same day, they released a man with explosives on his shoes?
The man with a bipolar disorder is dead though. Somehow I don't feel any safer.
Let's run with that.
He Was Bi-Polar, Now He's Dead!
Dead silence on the set for at least a second. Then much laughter. Obviously Brian had read that tease with a little more gusto than anyone imagined he would.
1. Passenger on plane weaing back-pack.
2. Passenger runs towards cockpit.
3. Passenger refuses to stop when commanded.
1+2+3 = Dead passenger
It IS really that simple.
Bingo! Just like Sindy Shehand...
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