Less than than 24 hours after a gunman shot and killed five people and injured six others, Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport was up and running Saturday morning.
But back to normal? Far from it.
The bottom floor of the airport’s Terminal 2, where authorities say 26-year-old Esteban Santiago emptied a 9mm semi-automatic handgun into a group of people in the baggage-claim area, remained taped off and closed.
On the terminal’s second level, hundreds of travelers stood in long check-in lines while being guarded by dozens of officers brandishing long guns and dressed more like soldiers than police officers.
The FBI said Saturday that terrorism can not be ruled out as motivation for the rampage, but added it appears Santiago acted alone and may suffer from mental illness.
Santiago, of Anchorage, Alaska, is being held at the Broward County Jail on homicide charges and is scheduled to appear in federal court Monday. He could face the death penalty if convicted.
George L. Piro, special agent in charge of Miami’s FBI office, said no connections have been established between Santiago and the Fort Lauderdale area, but that “indications are that he came here to carry out this horrific attack.”
Two of the six people shot by Santiago remain in critical condition, hospital officials said. Broward Sheriff Scott Israel declined to identify any of those who were killed or injured.
Three victims who died have been identified independently as Terry Andres, 62, of Virginia Beach, Virginia., Michael Oehme, 57, from Council Bluffs, Iowa, and Olga Woltering, a great-grandmother in her 80s, from Marietta, Georgia.
Piro said there is no evidence that “triggers” — such as an altercation with passengers at the airport’s baggage claim or with airline employees during his two-leg Delta trip that began in Anchorage — could be the impetus for Santiago’s attack.
Officials said that Santiago followed all legal procedures by checking his handgun Friday in Anchorage before connecting in Minneapolis-St. Paul on another Delta Air Lines flight to Fort Lauderdale. Witness accounts have reported that Santiago, a former national guardsman and Iraqi war veteran, grabbed his belongings from baggage claim, assembled and loaded his gun in a bathroom, then came out firing.
The criminal complaint released late Saturday said Santiago fired 10-15 rounds “aiming at his victims’ heads.” After running out of ammunition, Santiago reportedly sprawled on the floor and waited to be arrested.
Israel said that it took 70-80 seconds before sheriff’s deputies came “in contact” with Santiago and that he offered no resistance during his arrest.
Piro acknowledged that Santiago had drawn suspicions in November after he walked into an FBI office in Anchorage and exhibited “erratic behavior.” Agents were concerned enough that they had Santiago taken into custody and evaluated at a mental-health facility. Authorities in Alaska said later Saturday that they had taken a gun from Santiago during his evaluation, but returned it to him upon his release. There was no confirmation Saturday that the gun was the one used in Friday’s fatal shootings.
Santiago was not on the government’s no-fly list, according to the FBI. Piro declined to speculate on the “disconnect” between an individual whose behavior draws serious concerns from the FBI and his exclusion from the no-fly list.
During a news conference at the airport Saturday, Gov. Rick Scott insisted that “our state is safe” while pointing to dropping crime numbers and rising tourism.
Friday’s shootings follow the June 12 massacre at Pulse nightclub in Orlando where 29-year-old Omar Mateen killed 49 people and injured 53 others before he was killed in a shootout with police. Tourism officials also have had to deal with a Zika outbreak that struck the state in 2016.
Scott, who ordered that all flags be flown at half-staff at all state government buildings in remembrance of those who died, declined to address questions regarding whether guns should be allowed at airports.
A bill is set to be introduced this week by state Sen. Greg Steube, R-Sarasota, that would repeal laws forbidding guns on college campuses, airport terminals and government meetings.
Broward Health Medical Center officials say 54 patients were brought to the hospital after the shootings. Nine of those patients were admitted, including the six with gunshot wounds. Of the nine people admitted, two are in critical condition, five are in good condition and two have been released, a spokeswoman said.
Dozens of those injured were hurt during the mass chaos that struck following the shootings. Rumors of a second gunman caused bedlam in terminals unaffected by the shooting, resulting in people tripping and falling over themselves and items left behind.
Airport director Mark Gale said that 20,000 pieces of luggage, cellphones, passports and others items had been recovered. A private company is being used to get that property back to its owners, Gale said.
David Bean and his wife, Ann, of Massachusetts, arrived Friday at Terminal 3, one terminal away from the shooting, just before the incident to fly out to Boston.
“We were watching it unfold on TV and all of a sudden there was panic, and security and police rushed the terminal shouting, ‘Hit the floor! Hit the floor!’ ” David Bean said.
Bean and his wife were back at the airport Saturday morning, met by machine-gun-toting deputies and officers from other law enforcement agencies.
“Will there be a difference in security?” Israel said. “There certainly will.”
Israel pointed to the “beefed-up” presence of deputies, including the agency’s SWAT team, and said that security at the nation’s airports “is phenomenal.”
“When you have a person that could be suffering from a severe mental illness or you have a lone-wolf assassin that’s ready to conduct some cowardly, heinous act, there’s not much law enforcement or anybody else can do about it,” Israel said.
Thomas Jordan, an Air Force veteran from Nevada who did three tours in Iraq, was stuck in a terminal Friday when the chaos broke out.
“This was poorly handled,” Jordan said, describing a scene of shouting, panicked security forcing people to hide for hours with no explanation as to what was going on.
“We were trampled leaving the terminal to the jetway” where he and several others were held for safekeeping for nearly 10 hours, Jordan said.
Emily Labs, of Menominee, Michigan, said she was satisfied with the performance of security officials Friday, even though she was forced to sit on a Delta plane for nearly eight hours. Labs’ flight arrived from Detroit just after the shootings. As her plane touched down at the airport, Labs could see people frantically running on the tarmac and taking cover.
“It was terrifying,” Labs said. “But they did everything right. They kept people safe.”
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