LAX False Shooter Warning Panics Passengers in Terminal
This is the daily terror we live with, nobody had a gun but everyone reacted because in America it seems more likely that someone has a gun than not…
About 20 passengers fled through emergency doors and onto the tarmac at a Los Angeles International Airport terminal Monday after someone incorrectly said an armed man was on the loose, authorities and witnesses said.
The “misinformed announcement” near a boarding area apparently stemmed from a police pursuit of an unarmed driver outside Terminal 2, LAX Police Sgt. Belinda Joseph said.
Police responded to a call around 9 a.m. local time (noon ET) reporting that a man may be trying to commit suicide. They apprehended the man outside the terminal but “someone said that there was a man with a gun, which was not true,” Joseph said.
Benjamin Horton, a photojournalist who was in the terminal at the time, told The Associated Press: “People started screaming and I could hear the trampling of a large number of people coming down the terminal. By the looks on people’s faces and the way that they were scattering it seemed to me that people were trying to get away from a shooter.”
More: LAX False Shooter Warning Panics Passengers in Terminal - NBC News.com