Harry Krause wrote:
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
(Time Magazine)
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."
--
Cheney, Dick=The greater of two evils.


It was a sad and tragic event. However, with all of the millions of air
miles that sky marshalls have flown and this the first shooting it
would be really hard to make a case that the sky marshalls are just
trigger happy idiots who like to hear their guns go "bang."
Something caused them to kill this guy, and it probably wasn't caprice
or boredom.

If the witness didn't hear the guy claim he had a bomb, then the
witness (had he been a sky marshall instead of witness) probably
wouldn't have shot him. Yes, it could have been a mistake- but it
probably wasn't a deliberate assassination.

The only remotely positive aspect of this tragedy is that if there are
any terrorist *******s wondering if there are really sky marshalls on
at least some US flights, it certainly demonstrates that there are.

You couldn't begin to compare this situation with say, Kent State, for
example.

I think I might have seen a sky marshall as we went through security
for one of the four legs of our recent flight to Argentia. He walked up
to the security screening area, called an inspector aside, showed him a
badge, said "law enforcement" and then some other word that didn't seem
to make sense (maybe the password of the day?). He was allowed in
without having to pass through the metal detector.