Sunday, November 3, 2013
TSA identifies officer slain in LAX ‘chaos’
A rifle-wielding gunman killed a Transportation Security Administration officer, injured two others and fired a barrage of shots Friday morning inside a terminal at Los Angeles International Airport before police shot him and took him into custody.
The shooting caused chaos in the world’s sixth-busiest airport, interrupted air traffic and gave the nation yet another burst of gun-fueled violence in a place where people least expected it. It came less than a year after the mass shootings at a school in Newtown, Conn., and a month and a half after the shootings at the Washington Navy Yard.
The officer who died was the first TSA employee to perish in the line of the duty. The TSA identified him late Friday as Gerardo I. Hernandez, 39.
Two other TSA employees were wounded, Administrator John Pistole wrote in a note to workers, while some of the other victims possibly suffered “evasion injuries, where they may have injured themselves trying to get away,” FBI agent David Bowdich told reporters during a news conference as parts of the airport began to reopen.
Bowdich confirmed that the suspect is 23-year-old Los Angeles resident Paul Anthony Ciancia, whom The Associated Press described as a “man from New Jersey who wrote a rant about killing Transportation Safety Administration workers.” The news service said he wore fatigues and had a bag containing a hand-written note that said he “wanted to kill TSA and pigs,” and had talked about suicide in a text to a relative.
Authorities offered no details about the gunman’s motives, including whether he may have hoped to get on board a plane.
“We are still trying to determine how he got here,” Bowdich said after a reporter asked whether Ciancia had driven himself to the airport. The FBI agent said he didn’t know the suspect’s medical condition but that he was receiving treatment in a hospital.
Ciancia had earlier sent a text message to a sibling “in reference to him taking his own life,” Pennsville, N.J., police Chief Allen Cummings told the AP. The chief said Ciancia’s father called him early Friday afternoon asking for help locating his son. Cummings said he called Los Angeles police, who sent a patrol car to Ciancia’s apartment, where two roommates said they had seen him Thursday and that he was fine.
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Author: By KEVIN ROBILLARD
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