Suspected LAX gunman charged
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| This photo provided by the FBI shows Paul Ciancia, 23. Accused of opening fire inside the Los Angeles airport, Ciancia was determined to lash out at the Transportation Security Administration, saying in a note that he wanted to kill at least one TSA officer and didn’t care which one, authorities said Saturday, Nov. 2, 2013. |
LOS ANGELES
(AP) -- Federal prosecutors filed charges of murder and commission of
violence at an international airport against the unemployed motorcycle
mechanic suspected of carrying out the deadly shooting at the Los
Angeles airport.
If convicted, Paul Ciancia
could get the death penalty. He was arrested Friday after authorities
say he barged into a terminal, pulled an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle from
his duffel bag and opened fire. The bullets killed a Transportation
Security Administration officer and injuring four others before Ciancia
was gunned down by airport police.
The killing
was "believed to be a premeditated act of murder in the first-degree,"
U.S. Attorney Andre Birotte Jr. said in announcing the charges.
Authorities
believe someone dropped Ciancia off at the airport, and agents are
reviewing surveillance tapes and other evidence to piece together the
sequence of events.
"We are really going to
draw a picture of who this person was, his background, his history. That
will help us explain why he chose to do what he did," FBI Special Agent
in Charge David L. Bowdich said.
The suspect
appeared determined to lash out at the TSA, saying in a note that he
wanted to kill at least one TSA officer and didn't care which one,
authorities said.
It's not clear why Ciancia
targeted the agency, but the note found in his duffel bag suggested the
unemployed motorcycle mechanic was willing to kill almost any officer he
could confront.
"Black, white, yellow, brown,
I don't discriminate," the note read, according to a paraphrase by a
law enforcement official briefed on the investigation. The official
spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to
speak publicly.
The suspect's screed also
mentioned "fiat currency" and "NWO," possible references to the New
World Order, a conspiracy theory that foresees a totalitarian one-world
government.
Ciancia, who was shot four times
by airport police, remained hospitalized Saturday, but there was no word
on his condition. He was wounded in the mouth and the leg, authorities
said.
Terminal 3, the area where the shooting
happened, reopened Saturday afternoon. Passengers who had abandoned
luggage to escape Friday's gunfire were allowed to return to collect
their bags.
"When challenged, Los Angeles is
ready and knows how to respond. This is one tough town," said City
Councilman Mike Bonin, whose district includes the airport.
He praised airport police, saying they "saved untold lives" with a swift response that was "absolutely textbook."
The
TSA planned to review its security policies in the wake of the
shooting. Administrator John Pistole did not say if that meant arming
officers.
As airport operations returned to
normal, a few more details trickled out about Ciancia, who by all
accounts was reserved and solitary.
Former
classmates barely remember him and even a recent roommate could say
little about the young man who moved from New Jersey to Los Angeles less
than two years ago. A former classmate at Salesianum School in
Wilmington, Del., said Ciancia was incredibly quiet.
"He
kept to himself and ate lunch alone a lot," David Hamilton told the Los
Angeles Times. "I really don't remember any one person who was close to
him .... In four years, I never heard a word out of his mouth."
On
Friday, Ciancia's father called police in New Jersey, worried about his
son in L.A. The young man had sent texts to his family that suggested
he might be in trouble, at one point even saying goodbye.
The
call came too late. Ten minutes earlier, police said, he had walked
into the airport, pulled the rifle from his bag and began firing at TSA
officers. When the shooting stopped, one officer was dead and five other
people were wounded, including two more TSA workers and the gunman
himself.
When searched by police, Ciancia had
five 30-round magazines, and his bag contained "hundreds of rounds in
20-round boxes," the law-enforcement official said.
Authorities
identified the dead TSA officer as Gerardo I. Hernandez, 39, the first
TSA official in the agency's 12-year history to be killed in the line of
duty.
In the messages, the younger Ciancia
did not mention suicide or hurting others, but his father had heard from
a friend that his son may have had a gun, said Allen Cummings, police
chief in Pennsville, a small blue-collar town near the Delaware River
where Ciancia grew up.
The police chief called
Los Angeles police, who sent a patrol car to Ciancia's apartment.
There, two roommates said that they had seen him a day earlier and he
had appeared to be fine.
But by that time, shots were already breaking out at the airport.
"There's nothing we could do to stop him," Cummings said.
The
police chief said he never met Paul Ciancia Jr., but that he learned
from his father that he attended a technical school in Florida, then
moved to Los Angeles in 2012 hoping to get a job as a motorcycle
mechanic. He was having trouble finding work.
"I've never dealt with the kids," the chief said. "They were never on the police blotter, nothing like that."
Ciancia
graduated in December 2011 from Motorcycle Mechanics Institute in
Orlando, Fla., said Tina Miller, a spokeswoman for Universal Technical
Institute, the Scottsdale, Ariz., company that runs the school.
A basic motorcycle mechanic course takes about a year, she said.
After
arriving in LA, Ciancia stayed on the couch of an acquaintance at the
Rancho Los Feliz Apartment Homes for two weeks, apartment manager David
Plaxen said. Ciancia was never on a lease.
The
attack at the nation's third-busiest airport caused flight delays and
cancellations nationwide. Some Los Angeles-bound flights that were
already in the air were diverted. As gunshots rang out, swarms of
passengers screamed, dropped to the ground or ran for their lives.
Others
fled into the terminal, taking refuge in coffee shops and lounges as
the gunman shot his way toward them. The gunman seemed to ignore anyone
except TSA targets.
Friends and neighbors
remembered Hernandez as a doting father of two and a good neighbor who
went door-to-door warning neighbors to be careful after his home in the
Porter Ranch area of Los Angeles was burglarized.
In
brief remarks outside the couple's home north of downtown Los Angeles,
his widow, Ana Hernandez, said Saturday that her husband came to the
U.S. from El Salvador at age 15.
The couple, who married on Valentine's Day in 1998, had two children.
Friday's
attack was not the first shooting at LAX. On July 4, 2002, a limousine
driver opened fire at the airport's El Al ticket counter, killing an
airline employee and a person who was dropping off a friend at the
terminal. Police killed the gunman.
