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Air marshals kill man in Miami jetway

The agents fire on a passenger running off a plane when he appears to reach inside his bag.

By DAVID ADAMS and TAMARA LUSH
Published December 8, 2005

MIAMI - Under rainy, gray skies Wednesday, an agitated man aboard an American Airlines flight just minutes from takeoff at Miami International Airport rushed toward the cockpit and yelled that he was carrying a bomb in his backpack.

Two air marshals on board chased the man into the jetway then shot and killed him, making it the first time that air marshals have fired on an airline passenger in the United States.

"It was quite scary," passenger Mary Gardner told WTVJ-TV via a cell phone. "They wouldn't let you move. They wouldn't let you get anything out of your bag."

"Thank God everybody seems to be fine."

Within hours, authorities would detonate the man's luggage, question all 113 passengers and determine there was no evidence of a bomb on board.

"There's no reason to believe right now that there is any nexus to terrorism, or that, indeed, any other events are associated with this one," said Jim Bauer said the Special Agent in Charge of the Federal Air Marshals service in Miami.

Earlier Wednesday, Rigoberto Alpizar, 44, had flown into Miami from Quito, Ecuador. He then boarded Flight 924, which was due to depart for Orlando at 2:18 p.m. Alpizar was traveling with his wife and they were headed home to Maitland, a nearby suburb.

The drama began at 2:10 p.m. while the Boeing 757 was still at the gate.

Passengers and authorities said that something wasn't quite right with Alpizar; he appeared to be arguing loudly with his wife. When Alpizar started running toward the front of the plane and screaming about having a bomb in his bag, his wife followed, authorities said.

Alpizar was "uttering threatening words," according to Bauer.

The woman shouted that the man was mentally ill and hadn't taken his medicine. The man ran out of the plane - which was boarding passengers - and air marshals "came out of their cover" and pursued him, authorities said.

In the cylinderlike jetway, the marshals ordered Alpizar to get on the ground. Authorities said that Alpizar appeared to reach into his bag, and that's when they shot him.

"None of the other 113 passengers onboard were affected or were ever in any danger. This was an isolated incident," the airline said in a news release, adding that it would have no other comment.

Passenger John McAlhany, in seat 24-C, said the man "came running from the back. He must have been doing 1,000 mph. He knocked over stewardesses."

McAlhany, a construction worker from Sebastian, noticed the man acting erratically during the boarding process. "When we got on the plane, he got off, then came back on with his wife," McAlhany said. "He didn't look stable."

The airport was never closed. Concourse D, where the incident took place, was shut down for about 30 minutes, said Miami airport spokesman Marc Henderson. Air traffic continued as usual by midafternoon, although a barrage of television news satellite trucks caused traffic jams at the busy airport.

Immediately after the shooting, the Miami-Dade Police SWAT and bomb teams swarmed the plane, then ordered all passengers and crew off.

Live TV showed the passengers walking slowly off the plane via a staircase at the rear of the plane, with their hands clasped behind their heads.

Alpizar, a U.S. citizen, was flying through Miami from a working vacation to Peru, said his brother-in-law, Steven Beuchner. A neighbor, Louis Gunther, said he was watching Alpizar's home while he and his wife were on a missionary trip.

Alpizar and Steven Beuchner's sister, Anne, had been married about 22 years, relatives said. They met in Costa Rica when she was an exchange student. They had no children. Alpizar worked in the paint department of a home supply store. He had no prior criminal record in Florida.

"We're all still in shock. We're just speechless," said Kelley Beuchner, Alpizar's sister-in-law.

Agents refused to discuss the incident in detail, referring only to Alpizar's "furtive movements" as the cause for the shooting. Federal officials said there was no bomb in Alpizar's backpack.

The federal air marshals program was founded in 1968. In the 1970s, about 2,000 marshals were on duty, but by Sept. 11, the program employed just 33 agents. After Sept. 11, the program was beefed up and responsibility was transferred from the Federal Aviation Administration to the Department of Homeland Security.

Air marshals are different from the U.S. Marshals Service, which normally transports federal prisoners.

Air marshals fly undercover. Which planes they're on is a closely guarded secret, as is the number of marshals employed by the government.

Steve Purl, a former Scotland Yard special operations investigator and air marshal trainer who lives in the Tampa Bay area, says that it seemed to him that the two marshals involved in Wednesday's shooting in Miami acted within their "rules of engagement."

"Obviously when you're dealing with an incident like this in a confined space, obviously, you have to have the safety of the passengers in mind," said Purl. "You have to perceive there is an imminent threat."

Times researcher Caryn Baird and the Associated Press contributed to this report.

[Last modified December 8, 2005, 00:51:07]