Thread: At least one person shot at New Orleans airport ( + 1 stabbed )

At least one person shot at New Orleans airport

BY JONATHAN KAMINSKY
NEW ORLEANS Fri Mar 20, 2015 10:15pm EDT

(Reuters) - At least one person was shot at a New Orleans airport on Friday night, the local sheriff's office told Reuters.
No further information was available about the victim at the Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport in Louisiana, said Colonel John Fortunato, spokesman for the Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office.

The shooting happened about 8 p.m. CDT/9.00 p.m. ET in Concourse B, airport spokeswoman Michelle Wilcut told the Los Angeles Times.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/...0MH01S20150321

TV Breaking News said it started with at least one stabbing in the TSA line.

Man waving machete at New Orleans airport shot after stabbing airport official

By Agencies
2:29AM GMT 21 Mar 2015

A man wielding a machete entered Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport had been shot after reportedly stabbing a TSA officer.

No further information was available about the victim at the Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport in Louisiana, said Colonel John Fortunato, spokesman for the Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office.

The shooting happened about 8 p.m. CDT/9.00 p.m. ET in Concourse B, airport spokeswoman Michelle Wilcut told the Los Angeles Times.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...-official.html

What I saw on live TV looked more like a butcher knife than a machete.

One person shot, two stabbed at New Orleans airport - police and eyewitness

BY JONATHAN KAMINSKY
NEW ORLEANS Sat Mar 21, 2015 8:56am IST

(Reuters) - One person was shot at a New Orleans airport on Friday night, the local sheriff's office said, while two people, at least one them a Transportation Security Administration agent, suffered what appeared to be non-life threatening stab wounds, an eyewitness told Reuters.

Four shots were fired around 8 p.m. in Concourse B of the airport, said Brent Long, a resident of Austin, Texas, who was there with his family while waiting for a connecting flight.

After seeking shelter inside an airport restaurant, Long emerged to see a man lying motionless on the ground in front of a security checkpoint. Two people, at least one of them a female TSA agent, were cut and bleeding, though the wounds did not appear to be life-threatening, he said.

Farah Stockman, a Boston Globe editorial writer, wrote on Twitter that she was at the airport when a man who "stabbed 2 people at security line" had been "shot by police," and that there was a dead body at the scene.

Colonel John Fortunato, spokesman for the Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office, declined to provide further information about the incident.

An airport spokeswoman did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment.

http://in.reuters.com/article/2015/0...0MH02I20150321

. . . Green said they saw the machete and the suspect on the ground as they were leaving.
The knife was about 14 inches long, he said. . .

Panic at New Orleans Airport as Police Shoot Man Who Attacked T.S.A. Agents

By CAMPBELL ROBERTSON and LIAM STACK
MARCH 20, 2015

NEW ORLEANS — A 63-year-old man attacked Transportation Security Administration officers with wasp spray and a machete Friday night before he was shot by a law enforcement officer at a security gate to a busy concourse at Louis Armstrong International Airport outside New Orleans, the authorities said.

Sheriff Newell Normand of Jefferson Parish identified the man as Richard White, and said he did not know what set off the attack.

A little before 8 p.m., Mr. White pulled a can of wasp spray out of a paper bag and began to spray one T.S.A. agent and then another, the sheriff said. Then with his other hand, he drew a machete from his pants and began swinging it wildly at the agents. One agent tried to defend himself with a piece of luggage as Mr. White chased him and others through the metal detector, Sheriff Normand said. As they turned a corner back into the terminal, a deputy with the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office who was stationed by the security gates drew her pistol and fired at least three shots at Mr White. One of the shots hit another T.S.A. agent who had been fleeing Mr. White, the sheriff said.

Six people were treated at the scene by emergency personnel and four were taken to a hospital, only one of them — the attacker — with serious wounds, according to Jeffrey Elder, the director of New Orleans emergency services.

Sheriff Normand said that Mr. White was undergoing surgery.

The T.S.A. agent who was hit by a bullet was being treated for wounds that were not considered life-threatening.

A sheriff’s office spokesman said Mr. White lived in Kenner, the suburb where the airport is. His car was found parked outside the terminal and was checked by a bomb squad, he said. Law enforcement officers have been interviewing Mr. White’s family.

The incident was brief but rattled passengers departing and arriving at the main airport on the Gulf Coast on a busy Friday night.

“First somebody said, ‘Get down get down get down,’ then ‘bam bam bam,’ ” said Reginald McKamie, 62, mimicking the sound of rapid gunfire. He was on his way home to Houston to see a Stevie Wonder concert.

Farah Stockman, a columnist for The Boston Globe, emerged from the bathroom just after the police shot Mr. White and saw him lying face down in a pool of blood with “a very large knife lying near his head.”

“It was very chaotic,” she said in a phone interview. “People in the terminal were crying, people were cowering in bathroom stalls crying because they didn’t know what was going on.”

Everybody in Concourse B lay on the ground for several tense minutes after the attack, Mr. McKamie said, before people began to cautiously stand up and investigate what had happened. They soon dived for the floor again, though.

“Five minutes later someone yelled ‘get down’ again,” said Nicole Danjean, 46, who was headed to Washington, D.C. She said passengers ducked for cover wherever they could, some even rushing down nearby jet ways to hide.

But it was a false alarm, set off in the panicked airport by the sight of a woman fainting.

The authorities herded passengers out of the concourse through the security gates, and the flights were moved to other concourses. Several said they saw a shirtless man being treated for a wound to his shoulder blades and an older man with a wounded ankle.

Mr. White lay several feet away from passengers who were being escorted out of the concourse across a security area littered with abandoned luggage and scattered personal effects.

Freddie Smith, 22, said the airport looked like as if it had been “ransacked.”

Late Friday, flights were being moved to other concourses and the airport was still operating.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/21/us...-terminal.html

Police: New Orleans airport attacker armed with explosives

Greg Toppo, USATODAY3:54 p.m. EDT March 21, 2015

A man in his 60s sprayed TSA agents in the face with wasp killer then swung a machete at guards before being shot several times at a security checkpoint in the New Orleans international airport Friday, authorities said. (March 20)AP


(Photo: Jonathan Bachman, AP)

Authorities say the mentally ill 63-year-old suspect in a brazen machete attack at New Orleans' international airport Friday night may have been planning to bomb the site as well.

Jefferson Parish Sheriff Newell Normand said Richard White, 63, carried a bag with six gasoline-filled Molotov cocktails and a barbecue lighter when he assaulted Transportation Security Administration workers at Louis Armstrong International Airport.

Authorities also found an acetylene tank, smoke bombs and other supplies in his car, Normand said at a news conference Saturday afternoon.

White remains hospitalized after being shot three times by an officer.

"We very much want the opportunity to talk to him — we're not sure that that's actually going to happen," Normand said without elaborating.

Also speaking at the news conference, New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu called the incident "an unexpected attack by a clearly troubled and disturbed individual."

Police "acted quickly, they acted heroically" and saved lives, he added.

By standers caught in the chaos said police quickly fired shots to subdue the alleged attacker, sending passengers fleeing and ducking for cover.

"Mostly everybody was getting down to the ground and trying to hide under chairs," Nicole Danjean told The Times-Picayune. Danjean, who had been traveling from New Orleans to Washington, D.C., said she was at her gate when she heard three or four gunshots, then heard someone yell, "Everybody get down!"

Police said White approached an airport security checkpoint Friday evening, produced a can of wasp killer and began spraying agents and passengers who were standing in line.

Then he drew a large machete from the waistband of his pants and began swinging. A male TSA agent blocked the machete with a piece of luggage as White ran through a metal detector, then chased a female agent, Normand said late Friday.

Dominic Massa sent in this photo from the airport (Photo: Dominic Massa / Eyewitness News)

That's when Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Deputy Lt. Heather Slyve drew her weapon, he said. White continued to swing the machete as Slyve approached, and she fired three rounds, striking him in the face, chest and leg.

A TSA agent was struck in the arm by one of the bullets, authorities said, but the wound wasn't life-threatening.
White was taken into surgery at a hospital overnight, Normand said.

Investigators were trying to determine what White was doing at the airport. They didn't immediately offer a motive for the attack. He lives about 2 miles from the airport in nearby Kenner, La., and Normand said it didn't appear as if he was trying to get on a plane. Police were investigating "a mental illness component" in attack, he said Saturday.

A neighbor, Donna Jackson, told the Times-Picayune that White was a former Army serviceman, long since retired and living off Social Security and disability checks. He was a deeply religious man, she said, a Jehovah's Witness who shunned Western medicine and encouraged Jackson to use herbal remedies, even to treat her diabetes.


Police are still investigating why 63-year-old Richard White attacked two federal officers with wasp spray and a machete at Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport. VPC


The sheriff's office said White had been arrested several times for minor violations.

Bystanders described panic and chaos after Slyve fired the shots. "Everyone was ducking for cover," Garret Laborde, 31, who was flying to Houston, told the Associated Press.

"I knew they (the gunshots) were coming from the security checkpoint area," he said. "I immediately ducked down."

He called the scene "instant chaos" with "lots of females screaming." He remained down for several minutes and soon sirens went off, along with announcements ordering passengers to evacuate.

Jeremy Didier of Kansas City was returning from a trip in Florida with her 14-year-old daughter when she heard screaming. "I saw a man jumping over people" at the security line, she told the Times-Picayune. Didier said she heard shots and "everyone hit the floor."

Logan Tucker, 26, of Meridian, Miss., and Phillip Green, 33, of Houston, both headed to Houston for work as deckhands on a tugboat, said they were about 25 yards from where the attack unfolded. "I heard the gunshots," Tucker told the Associated Press.

"It was pandemonium after that," Green said. "I took cover. I didn't want to become part of the story."

Green said they saw the machete and the suspect on the ground as they were leaving. The knife was about 14 inches long, he said. He saw a TSA agent with an injury to her arm. "It was not something you expect in an airport, and I've traveled a lot," Tucker said.

Travelers clapped for the TSA agent as they passed her, witnesses said. The agent seemed to be in good spirits — she smiled and waved to passengers as they walked by.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/n...cene/25136201/

Airport machete attack suspect dies

CNN

- ‎3 minutes ago‎

(CNN) The man who attacked a security area at the New Orleans airport with a machete and wasp spray also had a bag of Molotov cocktails and a car containing smoke bombs and gas cylinders, authorities said...

Kenner's Richard White, 63, accused of the March 21 machete attack on a New Orleans airport security checkpoint, died Saturday (March 22, 2015) at 4:02 p.m., the Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office announced. White had been shot three times by a JPSO lieutenant responding to his assault, authorities said. (Courtesy of Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office)