Airline Worker Flees Checkpoint Before 70 Pounds Of Cocaine Found

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Federal authorities were investigating after an airline worker bolted from a security screening at Los Angeles International Airport, leaving behind about 70 pounds of cocaine stashed in her luggage.

Transportation Security Administration officers stopped the woman at random Friday, and she remained at large Monday, said Special Agent Timothy Massino with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

The Los Angeles Airport Peace Officers Association, which represents LAX airport police officers, said in a statement that the case shows why all flight attendants and other airport employees need to be screened.

"While passengers pose threats, so do employees at airports who game the system knowing that they will not be checked when they come to work," Marshall McClain, president of the union.

Security threats from "insiders" - airline and airport employees, as well as workers hired by contractors - have been a focus of the TSA, particularly after the December 2014 arrest of several Delta Air Lines baggage handlers. Prosecutors allege they smuggled guns, including an AK-47, from Atlanta to New York.

Federal authorities said last year that they busted a marijuana smuggling ring at Oakland International Airport, with arrests including baggage handlers. A separate arrest in December involved a TSA worker accused of allowing drug runners to pass their bags through X-ray machines without being stopped.

Four former baggage handlers at San Diego's airport were sentenced in September in a drug-smuggling case.

The TSA has said that full screening of all employees would cost too much. Instead, the agency has urged airports to increase random screenings of workers and to keep background checks up to date.

"We will pay particular attention to the insider threat," TSA Administrator Peter Neffenger told a Senate committee earlier this month.

Copyright 2016 The Associated Press.