A shooter who gunned down airport screening officers three.
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One security agent with the Transportation Security Administration, Gerardo Hernandez, was killed in the November 1, 2013, assault and three others were wounded.
Paul Anthony Ciancia, 26, pleaded guilty to one count of murder of a federal officer; two counts of attempted murder of a federal officer; four counts of violence at an worldwide airport; one count of discharging of a firearm during a crime of violence causing death; and three counts of discharging a firearm during a crime of violence, before U.S. District Judge Philip S. Gutierrez of the Central District of California.
As part of the plea deal, U.S. District Court prosecutors had agreed not to pursue the death penalty, but insisted that the murder charge against the 26-year-old would stand. He said very little, mostly answering “yes” and “no” to questions posed by a judge.
LOS ANGELES, Sept 6 A man who fatally shot a security screener and wounded three other people at a Los Angeles International Airport terminal in 2013 pleaded guilty on Tuesday to federal charges under an agreement with prosecutors that spares him the death penalty.
He first opened fire on officer Gerardo Hernandez at a document screening podium, wounding the 39-year-old married father of two children.
As Ciancia went up an escalator to the main security screening area, he saw Hernandez move and returned to fire several more shots at point-blank range, killing Hernandez.
Speer, 57, said he helped a shell-shocked passenger moving slower than others run down a hallway. A teacher at the airport for a flight, Brian Ludmer, was hit in the calf.
“A split second before I could say, ‘Oh my God, ‘ I felt boom, boom in the back and upper left arm”.
Speer said he managed to pick himself up and hide behind a pillar in a convenience store.
Investigators said in a criminal complaint they found a handwritten letter signed by Ciancia in his bag that addressed TSA officials, writing that he wanted to “instill fear in your traitorous minds”.
The other agent who survived, Tony Grigsby, said the sentence was fair and brings closure to his family, which includes a mother and a sister who are also TSA agents at the same airport.
“I didn’t know whether to get up and run away or sit there”.
“I’m satisfied”, Speer said. According to the plea agreement, as Ciancia passed passengers hiding in or fleeing the terminal during the attack, he asked if they were TSA and when they said no, he passed without shooting at them. I’m not a victim of the situation.
“If you made the conscious decision to put on a TSA costume and violate peoples’ rights this morning, I made the conscious decision to try to kill you this morning”, the note stated.
At about 9:15 that morning, Ciancia entered LAX and pulled his loaded Smith & Wesson semi-automatic rifle from two pieces of luggage he previously cut and strapped together in a way that concealed the weapon. Paul Ciancia agreed last week to plead guilty to all 11 charges in the rampage that killed one officer and wounded two others and a teacher who was headed for a flight.
Ciancia, an unemployed motorcycle mechanic living in Los Angeles after growing up in Pennsville, New Jersey, signed the note with his name, adding underneath, “Pissed-off Patriot”.
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Hernandez’s wife, Ana Machuca, declined to speak with reporters after Ciancia’s court hearing.
