http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4508432.stm

nearly every news piece is the same except for this litty ditty
and a few others below it

Bi-polar' threat man shot dead

From: Reuters - From correspondents in Miami, Florida December 08, 2005

picture caption:
Threat ... officials set up a perimeter around the plane / AP


THE man who fled a plane following a bomb threat and was shot dead by a US air marshal may have been mentally ill, it has been reported.

The 44-year-old US citizen was shot and killed on the jetway between the plane and the terminal at Miami International Airport.

A passenger on the plane has claimed she heard the shooting victim's wife say the man was bi-polar and was off his medication.

He reportedly made a bomb threat and fled the plane, running up the jetway "crazily", according to one witness.

"A passenger claimed to have a bomb aboard in a carry-on bag. At that point an air marshal team confronted the individual aboard the aircraft," Homeland Security Department spokesman Brian Doyle told Miami's WSVN television station.

"The passenger immediately exited the aircraft through the jetway, heading back toward the terminal. The air marshal team pursued the subject into the jetway and ordered the subject to get down the ground.

"The passenger appeared to be reaching for a carry-on bag ... the air marshalls took appropriate action ... shots were fired," Mr Doyle said. No bomb has been found.

It is the most serious security incident on a flight in the US since aviation laws were tightened following the terrorist attacks on New York and Washingtons on September 11, 2001.

Police and SWAT intervention teams immediately surrounded AA Flight 924 that had just arrived from the Colombian city of Medellin and had been scheduled go on to the Florida city of Orlando.

Mary Gardner, a passenger on the flight, said the man ran screaming down the aisle and a woman followed behind him, yelling "my husband, my husband," the WTVJ station report.

"I did hear the lady say her husband was bi-polar and had not had his medication," Ms Gardner said.

"I saw the woman, I think she was English-speaking, blonde hair, she was hysterical," she said.

"He started running crazily through the aisle," Ms Gardner added, "he was running like he was frantic, his arms flailing in the air."

This was thought to be the first time an air marshal has fired weapon on or near a plane, said Joseph Gutheinz, a former military pilot and lawyer who has worked in aviation security.

"I believe this is the first time they've ever discharged a weapon. I am 100 per cent sure they have never had an incident like this before," he said.

A Miami International Airport spokesman said Concourse D had been evacuated but the incident did not affect incoming or outgoing flights. It was reopened shortly after 3pm (7am AEDT).
 http://www.news.com.au/story/0,10117,17499886-2,00.html

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Bulletin: Man shot after bomb threat at door of US airliner
 http://www.bangkokpost.com/breaking_news/breakingnews.php?id=66426

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Person Shot at Miami Airport
 http://www.thestreet.com/_googlen/stocks/transportation/10256315.html?cm_ven=GOOGLEN&cm_cat=FREE&cm_ite=NA

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Air marshal shoots passenger in confrontation at Miami airport
 http://news.bostonherald.com/national/view.bg?articleid=116001

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so what happened?

was he on, near, or running away from the plane?

was he mental, retarded, black, one legged, eye patch
arabic, foreign looking, mongolian eyed, running or
wearing an unsuitable coat...carrying a chair leg...????

like Harry Stanley or Jean Charles de menezes?

'Broken news' for real innit?


you'd have to be f**kin' mental to want to
be in the USA right now that's 4 sure
sheesh!

seriously though...it just sound like he was
trying to get some attention now...dont it...

Well, he certainly achieved that, didn't he?

This is the war of/on terror. It messes with all our minds. It is not a great time to be an air marshall. Neither is it a great time to be a stressed passenger who may have all sorts of stresses and strains in their lives.

This war is no good. It is a war of error on both sides.

That means we have to work to correct it. Over here we need a proper enquiry into the shooting of de Menezes at Stockwell tube, and we need police constables who are open to enquiries in difficult times.

One thing is certain about this incident, no bomb was found.

Something similar happened to a schizophrenic guy while I was in America 5 years ago, before the global strategy of tension.. No one blinked an eye lid. It's more reflective of the attitude of the US to mental illness than anything else.

Some people do and say inappropriate things, often the thing they know they shouldn't say. I knew a nice, sympathetic and intelligent girl who used to burst out laughing whenever she heard something tragic or sad - she never meant to and was mortified that she did but she did and couldn't control it.
So it is a tragic death but at first sight - and even without a bomb - it doesn't seem to be the coldblooded, unjustified and needless slaying of the de Menezes execution on the tube.

I would be the last person to defend the US, but I think that realistically this was inevitable if the BBC report is entirely true.

He claimed to have a bomb on an airliner and then refused to co-operate when challenged. What were they supposed to do?

It isn't the same as the killing of IRA members on Gibraltar who were known to be terrorists, and when challenged offered no resistance, but were shot dead anyway.

It is not even in the same ball park as the Jean-Charles killing in London where police incompetence and lies were entirely to blame.

The marshalls presumably didn't know he was mentally ill, and maybe it would have been a good idea for the man himself, or his wife, or his doctor to ensure he had taken his medication before the flight.

Tragic nonetheless.

It's a shame but I don't see what else they could have done. They had somebody making bomb threats, then when he was challenged he reached into his bag. Shame that civilian was killed but there's no way they could have done anything else, if they did and he was a terrorist there could be dozens of people dead.

Apparently he was shot between the plane and the terminal building. Could they not have aimed to the legs to stop him, instead of murdering an innocent civilian?. Where they deaf and couldn't hear his wife as other passengers did?. Certainly not an unfortunate accident, but an agressive policing that fails to protect innocent civilians by being shot down for their mental illness. Not very compasionate, just or fare.

Arms flailing in the air, reaching into a carrier bag - sorry, the two seem mutually exclusive.

Sounds to me like the same type of work as was done in London, with the same conflicting on-the-scene bystander 'evidence' that immediately followed the case in London.

Information that conflicts is a quick attempt to cover the reprehensible actions of the security guards who fired - nothing more. Think of the 'heavy coat', the 'belt with wires poking out', the certainty that surrounded the poor Brazilian that this was another terrorist, thwarted by the quick thinking (and shooting) by the police in the immediate aftermath.

All which proved to be untrue - the reaching into his carrier bag seems to be a particularly badly thought out excuse for the shooting.

The other excuses (that perhaps he should have taken his medication first), is likewise similiar to the following train of thought re London example, where the media told us that he had been captured on CCTV pissing on a wall, and that he probably didn't have a valid visa - reasons to excuse the killing that were not only lies (at least in the case of the latter example), but completely irrelevant from an intellectual view point. It did however, seem to satisfy many bigoted minds in the UK, who are constantly up in arms over asylum seekers and illegal residents.

The point is, an innocent life was taken, and nothing was served to the public except an increasing fear of sustaining existence in a country where minorities (non-white, those with mental health problems, muslims, etc) are chosen as fair game by authorities. If this is not strictly true, it doesn't negate the fact that people from these groups must feel it to be so. I am certainly glad that I am white and of reasonable mental health, purely from a perspective of safety.

derek

Wasnt much else they could do to be honest. Also why listen to the wife in their minds she could of been another terrorist trying to help him. Its sad but he should of had his medication before getting on the plane. A leg shot might not of been much use if he had a bomb that could be dotonated but if he was decent distance away fromn people maybe it would of been worth the risk.

It would appear that this Cover Story was cooked up to protect the trigger-happy marshall from prosecution for shooting a psychiatric patient off his meds. This is what the type of hysteria created by Bush/PNAC Fascism breeds.

Eyewitness: "I Never Heard the Word 'Bomb'"
A passenger on Flight 924 gives his account of the shooting and says Rigoberto Alpizar never claimed to have a bomb
By SIOBHAN MORRISSEY/MIAMI

Posted Thursday, Dec. 08, 2005
At least one passenger aboard American Airlines Flight 924 maintains the federal air marshals were a little too quick on the draw when they shot and killed Rigoberto Alpizar as he frantically attempted to run off the airplane shortly before take-off.

"I don't think they needed to use deadly force with the guy," says John McAlhany, a 44-year-old construction worker from Sebastian, Fla. "He was getting off the plane." McAlhany also maintains that Alpizar never mentioned having a bomb.

"I never heard the word 'bomb' on the plane," McAlhany told TIME in a telephone interview. "I never heard the word bomb until the FBI asked me did you hear the word bomb. That is ridiculous." Even the authorities didn't come out and say bomb, McAlhany says. "They asked, 'Did you hear anything about the b-word?'" he says. "That's what they called it."

When the incident began McAlhany was in seat 24C, in the middle of the plane. "[Alpizar] was in the back," McAlhany says, "a few seats from the back bathroom. He sat down." Then, McAlhany says, "I heard an argument with his wife. He was saying 'I have to get off the plane.' She said, 'Calm down.'"

Alpizar took off running down the aisle, with his wife close behind him. "She was running behind him saying, 'He's sick. He's sick. He's ill. He's got a disorder," McAlhany recalls. "I don't know if she said bipolar disorder [as one witness has alleged]. She was trying to explain to the marshals that he was ill. He just wanted to get off the plane."

McAlhany described Alpizar as carrying a big backpack and wearing a fanny pack in front. He says it would have been impossible for Alpizar to lie flat on the floor of the plane, as marshals ordered him to do, with the fanny pack on. "You can't get on the ground with a fanny pack," he says. "You have to move it to the side."

By the time Alpizar made it to the front of the airplane, the crew had ordered the rest of the passengers to get down between the seats. "I didn't see him get shot," he says. "They kept telling me to get down. I heard about five shots."

McAlhany says he tried to see what was happening just in case he needed to take evasive action. "I wanted to make sure if anything was coming toward me and they were killing passengers I would have a chance to break somebody's neck," he says. "I was looking through the seats because I wanted to see what was coming.

"I was on the phone with my brother. Somebody came down the aisle and put a shotgun to the back of my head and said put your hands on the seat in front of you. I got my cell phone karate chopped out of my hand. Then I realized it was an official."

In the ensuing events, many of the passengers began crying in fear, he recalls. "They were pointing the guns directly at us instead of pointing them to the ground," he says "One little girl was crying. There was a lady crying all the way to the hotel."

McAlhany said he saw Alpizar before the flight and is absolutely stunned by what unfolded on the airplane. He says he saw Alpizar eating a sandwich in the boarding area before getting on the plane. He looked normal at that time, McAlhany says. He thinks the whole thing was a mistake: "I don't believe he should be dead right now."

 http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1138965,00.html

"I can tell you, he never said a thing in that airplane. He never called out he had a bomb," said Orlando architect Jorge A. Borrelli, who helped comfort Alpizar's wife after the gunfire. "He never said a word from the point he passed me at Row 9. . . . He did not say a word to anybody."
Two teens seated in Row 26 agreed. So did Jorge Figueroa, a power-plant operator from Lakeland seated a few rows behind first class.
"He wasn't saying anything; he was just running," Figueroa said. "I said to myself, 'It is probably a person who took the wrong plane.' "
...
"And she said to the small group of us kind of huddled around her, holding her, that -- I believe she said -- that he feared there was a bomb on the plane. . . . I think he was having a panic attack."


Before 911 the US had something like 36 air marshalls and they never used to shoot anyone as far as I recall. They got 200,000 applications to be marshalls after 911. I doubt 911 motivated the best people for the job, they probably all think they're Bruce Willis. If I ever fly again it will not be with an american airline.