Air Marshals 'Had To Stop Threat'

Officials, Experts: They Were Right To Shoot Bomb Claim Passenger

(CBS/AP)  The air marshals who shot and killed an agitated passenger handled the situation exactly right, say officials and security experts.

Rigoberto Alpizar ran down the aisle of an American Airlines Boeing 757 that had landed in Miami, claiming to have a bomb in his backpack. Once out on the jetway connecting the plane to the terminal, he ignored the marshals' orders and reached into his backpack.

"There were like four or five shots and then everybody hit the deck," Flight 924 passenger Mary Gardner said Thursday on CBS News' The Early Show. "That's when everybody started praying I think. It was scary."

The shooting marked a first for federal air marshals, who have been flying in much greater numbers since Sept. 11, reports CBS News correspondent Bob Orr. The marshals, who often fly in teams, regularly train with weapons in aircraft mockups to learn how to shoot safely in very confined and congested spaces.

There was no alternative other than to shoot Alpizar, Federal Air Marshal Service spokesman Dave Adams said.

"Mr. Alpizar was told to drop his bag. He kept approaching the federal air marshals ... He reached to the bag, started approaching the federal air marshals again," Adams told Early Show co-anchor René Syler. "They had to stop the threat. The only thing was to be able to immediately stop it for their safety and the safety of passengers in the terminal."

"They did exactly what they were trained to do," he added.

"They've got to make the decision based on their conversations with this individual, what they tell him to do, and the fact that he's not responding, and he says he has a bomb," said CBS News security consultant Robert Strang.

"There are too many people around, not only the lives of the actual air marshals, but there are other people in the immediate area," Strang, a former FBI agent, told CBS Radio News. "They're trained to be able to respond to this kind of thing. They had no choice but to shoot him."

Alpizar, a 44-year-old U.S. citizen, had arrived earlier in the day from Quito, Ecuador, and Flight 924 was going to Orlando, near his home in Maitland.

Alipizar's sister-in-law, Jeanne Jentsch, read a tearful statement Thursday (video) to the press, saying, "Rigo Alpizar was a loving, gentle, and caring husband, uncle, brother, son and friend." Jentsch added, "He will be sorely missed by all who knew him."

Relatives said Alpizar and his wife had been on a working vacation in Peru. A neighbor who said he had been asked to watch the couple's home described the vacation as a missionary trip.

"We're all still in shock. We're just speechless," a sister-in-law, Kelley Beuchner, said by telephone from her home in Milwaukee.

The shooting occurred shortly after 2 p.m. as Flight 924 was about to take off for Orlando with the man and 119 other passengers and crew, American spokesman Tim Wagner said.

"Shortly after the gentleman went through first class and out the door, his wife returned back toward coach, apologizing, that her husband was sick and she had to collect her bags," said passenger Michael Beshears, who describes the passenger's wife as "borderline hysterical."

"Shortly after the shots rang out she was moving back toward — I think she was attempting to get to the jetway," Beshears told co-anchor Hannah Storm. "And I have to commend the flight attendant for stopping her there in our row."

"[Mrs. Alpizar] said, 'my husband is bipolar he didn't take his medicine,'" Gardner added.