MIAMI (Dec. 8) - Shortly after boarding a plane, passengers say, they saw a man bolt from his seat and run down the aisle, with his screaming wife and man in a Hawaiian shirt behind.
"My husband! My husband!" one passenger said she heard the wife cry.
The chase ended moments later Wednesday in a Miami International Airport jetway, when authorities say Rigoberto Alpizar appeared to reach for his bag. He was shot to death by the man in the Hawaiian shirt and a second pursuer, both undercover air marshals.
Before he ran off the plane he "uttered threatening words that included a sentence to the effect that he had a bomb," said James E. Bauer, agent in charge of the Federal Air Marshal Service field office in Miami.
No bomb was found, and federal officials later concluded there was no link to terrorism. Witnesses said his wife, Anne, frantically tried to explain he was bipolar, a mental illness also known as manic-depression, and was off his medication.
"She said it was her fault that he was bipolar," said Mike Deshears, a Flight 924 passenger. "He was sick and she had convinced him to get on the plane."
The flight had arrived in Miami from Bogota, Colombia and was to continue on to Orlando.
It was the first time since the Sept. 11 attacks that an air marshal discharged a firearm at a passenger or suspect, Homeland Security Department spokesman Brian Doyle said.
Dave Adams, a spokesman for the air marshals, confirmed Thursday there were two marshals on the flight and said both fired at Alpizar.
"They felt their life was threatened," he told ABC's "Good Morning America." "This was a textbook scenario and they acted instinctively based on the training."
The Bush administration hired thousands of additional air marshals after Sept. 11, when the nation had only 33. The exact number now is classified. Marshals fly undercover, and which planes they're on is a closely guarded secret.
Officials declined to say how many times Alpizar was shot, but passengers reported hearing between four to six shots. Authorities did not confirm he suffered from a mental illness.
"The man sitting next to me got on the floor," said passenger Olga Echeverrie, of Guatemala. "I threw myself on the floor to pray for God's mercy on us."
Several Colombian journalists were aboard the plane making a trip to Orlando, including journalist Gerardo Chavez of the newspaper El Tiempo, who recounted how the shooting occurred in an article published Thursday.
"It all began when the passengers were nearly finished boarding. There were about two people left who hadn't boarded yet. The man (Alpizar) was around the second-to-the-last passenger who had passed by my side. I was in the seats at the rear, and suddenly he passed by and pushed the flight attendant and left shouting like a madman, and he went to the front door" of the plane, Chavez was quoted as saying.
"A lady followed him, shouting: 'He's ill, he's ill!"' Chavez recalled. "Then there was some noise outside. They said: 'Get down on the floor!' And everybody threw themselves under the seats. When they had the situation under control, they told us to sit up again."
He said police and federal agents who came aboard the plane thoroughly frisked passengers and then ordered them off the plane, "all of us with our hands on our heads."
Alpizar, who worked in the paint department of a home supply store, was returning from a missionary trip in Ecuador, according to a neighbor who was watching his ranch-style house in the Orlando suburb of Maitland.
"We're all still in shock," said his sister-in-law, Kelley Buechner, in a telephone interview from her home in Milwaukee. "We're just speechless."
Investigators closed the concourse at the airport for half an hour and spread passengers' bags on the tarmac. Dogs sniffed them for explosives, and bomb squad members blew up at least two bags. No bombs were found.
The remaining passengers were kept on the plane for an hour, then police told them to leave with their hands behind their backs, said Lucy Argote, 15, of Codazi, Colombia. They had to leave their possessions behind.
Argote said Alpizar got up from his seat and ran toward the plane's door, with his wife yelling in Spanish.
"Officers told him to stop and he said no," the teen said. "He was running like a crazy man."
Another passenger, Mary Gardner, told WTVJ-TV in Miami that she also heard his wife call after him as he ran down the aisle.
"He was frantic, his arms flailing in the air," she said. She said a woman followed, shouting, "My husband! My husband!"
The Alpizars had been married for about two decades and met when Anne was an exchange student in Costa Rica, family members said. Rigoberto became a naturalized U.S. citizen.
He was middle-eastern, running around, implying there was a bomb in a bag.
Whether he was warning someone or threatening someone, he had one thing coming to him by acting that way.
If of course he was just trying to warn someone that he thought there might be a bomb, it's unfortunate but this is what happens when you act irrationally.
It IS unfortunate that the guy had mental problems, but there have been cases where mentally ill people have killed others before-Charles Whitman in 1962 on top of the water tower in Texas..they found out he had a brain tumor of considerable size and it caused him to do what he did.
Mentally ill people can kill or be a threat just as well. This is not to say that it HAD to end this way, but saying there was a bomb and reaching into his bag after being told to stop, what do you expect?
I hear a lot of people using this for the age old pastime of blaming
Bush and the Patriot Act, blah blah blah and a lot of general anger towards the incident.
But at the same time, if the air marshals HADN'T reacted, and there WAS a bomb, and people died after he detonated it, the people would STILL be complaining because then, the police wouldn't have acted fast enough to STOP him. Damned if you do, dammed if you don't.
I don't think the fact that he was middle eastern even matters at this point. He was mentioning the "bomb" word, annd I think he would have been taken down no matter what he looked like.
I regret this event, as the situation was harmless after all. No bomb, just someone out of touch with reality who happened to have a 'suspicious appearance'.
Just look at what humankind is inflicting upon itself now-a-days... As a Arabic person you can't get in to a plane without raising suspicion anymore, and no white person, medic or not, is safe in Iraq or Afghanistan. To many minds in the crowds following the ideas of the few 'leaders' above them and in between we forget to see each-other as equal human beings in the same situation.
Once read humankind has about 500.000 years before we get extinct, I'd say by the path we walk now it's more likely 500 years...
I remember being in line at an airport back in 2001 (pre-9\11) and I was going to Florida to see some relatives. A guy in line joked about the possibility of "unscheduled stops at Beirut or Tehran" and the guy who checked him in told him "Don't even GO there, and if I hear that once more, you're going to be very sorry." Funny thing, that was before 9\11 too.
Sure there are. But they are or not reliable enough in the man upstairs point of view, or just plain old to expensive to develop.
Considering spending a couple of millions on developing a nonlethal apprehension device which might be used 3 times a year or spending 3 bucks worth of bullets to achieve the the same goal, with a messier ending but stopping a potential terrorist just the same, for the guys upstairs the choice is easily made...
I heard that he was middle-eastern yesterday on AOL news.
More over, I'm quite tired of people acting as if you shouldn't assume they're middle-eastern.
The people we are in "danger" from, are middle-eastern terrorists. Why should I sit here thinking "He might be white or black." when both you and I know that in a case like this, it's likely that he wasn't?
Pointless. If he's not middle-eastern, then I'm wrong in calling him such. I have no reason not to believe AOL news. Don't see why they'd lie about the nationality.
Or why Fox news stood behind TIME magazine in that false report of Quran abuse at Guantanamo bay. Who knows how many future generations of terrorists will remember this "incident" as kids and use it for their adult activities as extremist scum. Because sensationalism was more important than fact, a new generation of terrorists is just waiting to get at us because one magazine and one news station wanted higher ratings and magazine sales.
Before 9/11 it was serious to joke about guns, but now anyone stupid enough to even suggest anything no matter what condition he/she is in would think twice now........................don't do it.....
i cant see how anyone could be outraged by this.
it sucks, but that air marshal did his job. the guy said he had a bomb,
took off, and got his ass shot. yeah, its unfortunate, but he asked for it.
of coarse if there was a coverup we would never know, would we?