Bomb Scare: Person Shot on AA Flight

All the freedoms taken away, all the money spent. Guess you can’t protect everything.

I admit my first thought was that this would end up being some confusion stemming from a language barrier. It will be interesting to watch this unfold. I do wonder why a man would claim to have a bomb after the plane landed and parked at the jetway.

Update by Stephen VanDyke: For the lazy readers, the juicy part:

A witness said that the man frantically ran down the aisle of the Boeing 757 and that a woman with him said he was mentally ill.

The passenger, who indicated there was a bomb in the bag, was confronted by air marshals but ran off the aircraft, Doyle said.

The marshals pursued and ordered the passenger to get on the ground, but the man did not comply and was shot when apparently reaching into the bag, Doyle said. Authorities did not immediately say whether any bomb was found.

Crowded airport terminal, there’s gotta be a firsthand blogged account of this.

Oh, and who wouldn’t run away from a bag that had a bomb in it after telling an air marshall? Woops, looks like he decided to be a moron and take a jog with the bag. The shooting is a little more understandable now.

Another update by Stephen VanDyke: Remember the last time a South American guy didn’t cooperate with police and was shot dead (London)? Innocent…

Might want to reserve judgement on this one until all the facts are told.

posted Dec 7th, 2005 by michelleshinghal
  • http://www.ioerror.us/ Homeland Stupidity

    He came into the airport from a different plane, from a different COUNTRY (Ecuador), had already cleared customs, and was changing planes onto this flight to his destination, Orlando, where he was apparently a resident, when this incident occurred.

    It’s not known what exactly caused him to act this way, but if he was bipolar and off his medication, that could quite possibly do it.

  • Neb Okla

    We’re really unlikely to stop a bomber by shooting him/her. Except for certain shots to the central nervous system, even a shot in the heart would give a determined person enough time to trigger a device.

    More evidence that this doesn’t work is that the Israelis don’t shoot bombers. Apparently they’ve found that it risks setting the bombs off. Their approach is to isolate the subject and back off.

    A friend of mine seemed to feel it was ok to shoot the guy. Just yesterday, some kids at a local school claimed to have a bomb in their locker. I guess they should have been shot out of an abundance of caution.

    And regarding the pink “Try Firefox 1.5, you’ll like it better.” banner for IE users, it’s annoying, amateurish, and assumes I didn’t already try Firefox and find it so similar to IE that it didn’t warrant a switch (and yes, I tried it exclusively for a month solid just to be sure).

  • michelleshinghal

    I was on a business call when I posted the original statements. (I often have to hold while somethng is researched.) I came back to test the community temperature. Thank you, VanDyke, for updating. Turns out that I was the lazy reader- ok, not really lazy, but had to get back to my business call. ;o) Interestingly, Bush is enjoying elevated approval ratings.

  • http://www.opentorrent.org OpenTorrent

    More evidence that this doesn’t work is that the Israelis don’t shoot bombers. Apparently they’ve found that it risks setting the bombs off. Their approach is to isolate the subject and back off.

    Now wouldn’t it be nice if American Police could learn this tactic instead of participating in a high speed chase and further endangering the lives of civilians? Then again, they would risk not being featured on “America’s Scariest Police Chases” and what-not!

    And regarding the pink “Try Firefox 1.5, you’ll like it better.” banner for IE users, it’s annoying, amateurish, and assumes I didn’t already try Firefox and find it so similar to IE that it didn’t warrant a switch (and yes, I tried it exclusively for a month solid just to be sure).

    Deal with it! BTW, Firefox is VERY dissimilar to IE in many way which I will not even go into as this is not the proper forum for such a debate or flame war… Enjoy your phish…

  • vforvandyke

    For the FireFox vs IE posts I will be adding some code that takes into consideration people who are reading from work and are stuck with IE (the most common) or those who (*gasp*) actually like IE. It’s supposed to annoy, but not drive people away.

  • http://www.opentorrent.org OpenTorrent

    True enough… Woohoo! Gotta love IE… hell I go out of my way to run it on Linux! Pshaw!

  • Neb Okla

    There’s little reason to chase people in Columbus. We have a helicopter in the air from 10:00a to 4:00a every day weather permitting. Once the heli has them, they should back off.

    Of course, operating a fleet of UAV’s would be cheaper. Cops like to cite the case where the chopper pilots landed and assisted in an arrest one time. They don’t like to point out the case where one of the multi-million dollar choppers crashed on a residential street.

    Oh, and OpenTorrent, here’s a link for you:
    http://tech-security.com/blog/files/PoC.html