Man Shot After Airliner Bomb Claim

Wife Says Distraught Passenger Had Bipolar Disorder; No Bomb Found

(CBS/AP) 
"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.

After the shooting, investigators spread passengers' bags on the tarmac and let dogs sniff them for explosives, and bomb squad members blew up at least two bags.

No bomb was found, said James E. Bauer, agent in charge of the Federal Air Marshals field office in Miami. He said there was no reason to believe there was any connection to terrorists.

The concourse where the shooting took place was shut down for a half-hour, but the rest of the airport continued operating, officials said.

Federal officials declined to say how many times Alpizar was shot, or reveal how many air marshals were on the plane.

After the shooting, police boarded the plane.

"When the SWAT team came in, that was absolutely terrifying because the guns were all pointed at all of us. It was very scary and went on quite a while," said Gardner.

Alpizar's brother-in-law, Steven Beuchner, said he was a native of Costa Rica, and met Beuchner's sister, Anne, when she was an exchange student there. Relatives said the couple had been married about two decades.

Neighbors described Alpizar as a pleasant man who worked in the paint department of a home-supply store and spent his spare time tending to the lawn of his ranch-style house. Many found it incomprehensible that he could have made a bomb threat.

"He was a nice guy, always smiling, always talkative," Louis Gunther said. "Everybody is talking about a guy I know nothing about."

Alex McLeod, 16, who lives three houses from the Alpizars, said: "This whole neighborhood is shocked. ... Totally uncharacteristic of the guy."

No one answered the door Wednesday evening at the Alpizars' modest, four-bedroom house on a tree-lined street in suburban Orlando.

There were only 33 air marshals at the time of the Sept. 11 attacks. The Bush administration hired thousands more afterward, but the exact number is classified.

Marshals fly undercover, and which planes they're on is a closely guarded secret. Until Wednesday, no marshal had fired a weapon, though they had been involved in scores of incidents.

Rep. John Mica, R-Fla., who as chairman of the House aviation subcommittee was involved in the expansion of the air marshal service, called Wednesday's shooting "an unfortunate incident."

"Everyone's on edge because we view the biggest threat as explosives, or bombs," he said.