MIAMI (Dec. 9) - The airline passenger shot to death by federal marshals who said he made a bomb threat was agitated even before boarding and later appeared to be desperate to get off the plane, some fellow travelers said.
One passenger said he "absolutely never heard the word 'bomb' at all" during the uproar as the Orlando-bound flight prepared to leave Miami on Wednesday.
Federal officials say Rigoberto Alpizar made the threat in the jetway, after running up the plane's aisle from his seat at the back of the jetliner. They opened fire because the 44-year-old Home Depot employee ignored their orders to stop, reached into his backpack and said he had a bomb, according to authorities.
Alpizar's brother, speaking from Costa Rica, said he would never believe the shooting was necessary.
"I can't conceive that the marshals wouldn't be able to overpower an unarmed, single man, especially knowing he had already cleared every security check," Carlos Alpizar told The Orlando Sentinel.
Some passengers said they noticed Alpizar while waiting to get on the plane. They said he was singing "Go Down Moses" as his wife tried to calm him. Others said they saw him having lunch and described him as restless and anxious, but not dangerous.
"The wife was telling him, 'Calm down. Let other people get on the plane. It will be all right,"' said Alan Tirpak, a passenger.
Some passengers, including John McAlhany, said they believe Alpizar was no threat to anyone.
McAlhany, a 44-year-old construction worker who was returning home from a fishing trip in Key West, said he was sitting in Seat 21C when he noticed a commotion a few rows back.
"I heard him saying to his wife, 'I've got to get off the plane,"' McAlhany said. "He bumped me, bumped a couple of stewardesses. He just wanted to get off the plane."
Alpizar ran up the aisle into the first-class cabin, where marshals chased him onto the jetway, McAlhany said.
McAlhany said he "absolutely never heard the word 'bomb' at all."
"The first time I heard the word 'bomb' was when I was interviewed by the FBI," McAlhany said. "They kept asking if I heard him say the B-word. And I said, 'What is the B-word?' And they were like, 'Bomb.' I said no. They said, 'Are you sure?' And I am."
Added another passenger, Mary Gardner: "I did not hear him say that he had a bomb."
Officials say there was no bomb and they found no connection to terrorism.
Witnesses said Alpizar's wife, Anne Buechner, had frantically tried to explain he was bipolar, a mental illness also known as manic-depression, and was off his medication.
The National Alliance on Mental Illness called on the Air Marshal Service and other law enforcement agencies to train officers if they don't already in responding to people with severe mental illness.
Others said Alpizar's mental health didn't matter while marshals were trying to talk to him and determine if the threat was real.
Shooting to maim or injure - rather than kill - is not an option for federal agents, said John Amat, national operations vice president of the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association, which includes air marshals in its membership.
"The person was screaming, saying he would blow up the plane, reaching into his bag - they had to react," Amat said.
"The bottom line is, we're trained to shoot to stop the threat," said Amat, who is also a deputy with the U.S. Marshals Service in Miami. "Hollywood has this perception that we are such marksmen we can shoot an arm or leg with accuracy. We can't. These guys were in a very tense situation. In their minds they had to believe this person was an imminent threat to themselves or the people on the plane."
White House spokesman Scott McClellan said the two air marshals appeared to have acted properly when they shot to kill.
Both air marshals were hired in 2002 from other federal law enforcement agencies and were placed on administrative leave, said Brian Doyle, spokesman for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
Miami-Dade Police were investigating and the medical examiner's office was performing an autopsy on Alpizar, who was from Costa Rica but became a U.S. citizen years ago. He lived in Maitland, an Orlando suburb.
Neighbors said the couple had been returning to their home from a missionary trip to Ecuador. Buechner works for the Council on Quality and Leadership based in Towson, Md., a nonprofit organization focused on improving life for people with disabilities and mental illness, the organization said in a statement.
David Stempler, president of the Air Travelers Association, said he thinks the shooting may prove more "reassuring than disturbing" to the traveling public his organization represents. "This is a reminder they are there and are protecting the passengers and that it is a seriously deadly business," he said.
Armed police boarded the aircraft after the shooting, with some passengers in hysterics. McAlhany said he remembers having a shotgun pressed into his head by one officer, and hearing cries and screams from many passengers aboard the aircraft after the shooting in the jetway.
"This was wrong," McAlhany said. "This man should be with his family for Christmas. Now he's dead."
Associated Press writers Andrew Bridges, Mark Sherman and Lara Jakes Jordan in Washington; Mike Schneider and Travis Reed in Orlando; and Jessica Gresko and Tim Reynolds in Miami contributed to this story.
12/09/05 10:10 EST
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Updated: 11:09 AM EST
(Dec. 9) -- American Airlines Capt. Gary Boettcher has seen passengers hollering that their plane was going to explode. He's seen them try to rush off the plane once the door was closed.
"Passengers do crazy things on airlines," says Boettcher, president of the Coalition of Airline Pilots Associations. "You get a lot of (people) out there who don't understand ... the danger."
In the post-9/11 world, such behavior draws increasing scrutiny from flight crews. As the U.S. aviation system has become more security-conscious, it also has become less tolerant of strange behavior by passengers.
Those limits were exemplified Wednesday when two federal air marshals fatally shot a passenger who said he had a bomb on an American jet parked at Miami International Airport.
The passenger, Rigoberto Alpizar of Florida, did not have a bomb. A Miami-Dade police statement said Alpizar's wife told police her husband had bipolar disorder, which causes dramatic mood swings.
Although bomb threats on airplanes are rare, disruptions are not.
In 2004, the Federal Aviation Administration issued a record 302 fines against unruly passengers. That's in addition to more serious cases that are prosecuted criminally and less serious cases that flight crews don't report to the FAA.
"Our problem really is, where has civility gone in the airlines?" says Denis Breslin, another American Airlines captain and spokesman for the American pilots' union. "When someone steps outside those boundaries, there's only so much tolerance we can afford."
Breslin tells his crew before each flight that if a passenger acts up, get him the seat number. He'll call security officials on the ground to find the passenger's name and run a background check.
Even if the check turns up nothing, Breslin says he won't hesitate to declare an emergency and land the plane to have an unruly or erratic passenger removed.
"My personal view as a captain," Breslin says, "is that there is no tolerance for disruptive behavior on an airline."
Many agitated passengers turn out to be harmless. "But the problem is you don't know if someone is off their medication or a serious threat," says Tom McDaniel, president of the Southwest Airlines flight attendants' union. "Any time there's a threat on the aircraft, you can only assume it's the most serious threat."
McDaniel said flight attendants "have completely changed our procedures" since 9/11 and try to gauge the severity of a passenger threat and react accordingly. "We don't want anyone to overreact any more than we want someone to be harmed," McDaniel says.
If a passenger appears to pose a serious threat, flight attendants instruct other passengers to try to subdue him while pilots contact law enforcement, says John Black, head of the flight security committee of the Association of Flight Attendants.
Sometimes those efforts can be lethal. In 2000, Jonathan Burton, a passenger on a Southwest flight from Las Vegas to Salt Lake City, died after passengers and crewmembers tried to subdue him. Burton, 19, had kicked a hole in the cockpit door and became violent. An autopsy showed he suffocated. No charges were filed.
In most cases, disruptive passengers have a physical or mental problem that clouds their judgment.
In March 2000, Peter Bradley, who suffered from a rare brain infection, pulled out a pocketknife and broke into the cockpit of an Alaska Airlines flight from Mexico to San Francisco. Bradley briefly grabbed the jet's controls before being subdued by passengers and the flight crew.
Dennis Debbaudt of the Autism Society of America says people with mental disabilities might benefit from telling authorities ahead of time if they're planning to go through tight security.
"You can let them know you have characteristics that might be misjudged," he says. "It may be too late during the heat of the moment to let authorities know you need an accommodation."
More than 2 million U.S. adults, or about 1% of the population 18 and older, have bipolar disorder, according to the National Institute of Mental Health. The disorder causes swings between mania and depression, and medication is required to stabilize mood.
"Cognitive dysfunction is as much a part of bipolar disorder as mood," says Lydia Lewis, president of the Chicago-based Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance.
Michael Fitzpatrick, executive director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, does not blame the marshals who shot Alpizar. "The marshals are just in a horrific situation, having to make split decisions," Fitzpatrick says.
Air marshal spokesman Dave Adams says using lethal force is "a last resort" to be used after passengers have disobeyed orders to stop threatening behavior.
Homeland Security Department policy says, "Deadly force may be employed only when an officer has probable cause to believe there is an imminent threat of death or serious physical injury to the officer or to others."
None of nearly a dozen crewmembers and mental health experts criticized the air marshals.
"We as crewmembers love having federal air marshals on airplanes," says Robert Hesselbein, a flight captain and head of the national security committee for the Air Line Pilots Association. "It makes us feel safe."
12/09/2005 07:23
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(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. The Socialist Party of Oregon has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is the Party endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)