Los Angeles International Airport was locked down Friday morning, after a man with a rifle apparently shot and wounded a security-checkpoint officer, then was himself wounded by armed officers.
The gunman was secured by law enforcement personnel around 9:30 a.m. local time, and was reported to be in police custody.
Within an hour, the situation seemed to be under control, with no suggestion of further gunfire. A triage area outside the airport, with three coloured mats laid out for wounded people, were seeing little use.
Terminal 3 was evacuated and cordoned off, and arrival and departure roads to the airport, in addition to Century Boulevard, were closed.Outbound flights were cancelled, an airport spokesman said.
Airport officials said a police incident began about 9:30 a.m. at Terminal 3 at LAX, airport spokeswoman Nancy Suey Castles said.
Passenger Robert Perez told Press that TSA agents came through the terminal and yelled that a man had a gun.
In this aerial video frame grab provided by CBS-LA, fire and rescue personnel gather at Los Angeles International Airport on Friday. Shots were fired, prompting authorities to evacuate a terminal and stop flights headed for the city from taking off from other airports.
Aerial shots from Sky2 showed buses were transporting passengers who had disembarked from planes onto the runway area.
Passenger Robert Perez, who was
getting ready to fly Virgin Air, was taking a nap in the terminal when panic
erupted, he told CNN affiliate KCAL/KCBS.
"I heard a popping sound,
and everybody was diving for cover," Perez told the station. "The TSA
said there was a shooting in the terminal and evacuate the building."
At least 100 people came down a
staircase. "Everybody started to panic," Perez said.
Fox Sports national columnist
Bill Reiter was also at the airport during the gunfire. "After the initial
burst of gunfire and hiding, people started jumping over one another, jumping
off chairs, pushing each other. Chaos & fear," he said on his Twitter
account.
The passengers were directed to
board a bus and were taken to a smaller terminal, Perez told the affiliate.
Alex Neumann was at a food court,
waiting to travel to Miami, when the incident unfolded. He said Terminal 2 was
put into lockdown.
"People were running and
people getting knocked down. There was luggage everywhere," Neumann told
CNN. "Mayhem is the best I can describe it."
Several police officers moved
about the airport with guns drawn, he said.
The Los Angeles Fire Department
is assisting with a "multi-patient" incident at Los Angeles
International Airport, the department said Friday on Twitter.
Firefighters were laying down
tarps on the street at the airport, which appeared to be triage tarps. Several
ambulances were at the airport, and at least one person was loaded into an
ambulance.
The area around the airport was
jammed with cars as police shut down access to the airport Friday morning.
President Barack Obama has been briefed on the shooting at Los Angeles International Airport and will continue to be updated, but the White House had no further information at this time on what happened, spokesman Jay Carney said Friday.
