Sunday night’s shutdown in Los Angeles closely mirrored a situation at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport two weeks ago when reports of shots inside Terminal 8 shut down that airport.
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The travelers on the airfield caused the diversion of at least 27 flights to other airports and delayed 281 arrivals and departures.
Unconfirmed reports of gunshots created panic and led to evacuations at Los Angeles International Airport Sunday night.
NBC Nightly News anchor Lester Holt, who had just arrived at the airport, said passengers were streaming from the terminal buildings.
Many passengers however were “being screened by explosive detection K-9 units” before being allowed to enter the terminals for re-screening, she said, adding that reports “of an active shooter at LAX were unfounded”.
The Los Angeles Airport Police Division said in a statement that officers responded to reports of “a man dressed in black with a sword, wearing a mask”.
Officers with rifles stormed the airport but uncovered no evidence of a gunman or shots fired. Airlines had to divert 23 flights to other airports. Both episodes began with reports of what were vaguely described as “loud noises” (in NY, it was rumored to have been cheering over a Usain Bolt victory in the Rio Olympics), which were then somehow taken to be gun shots, setting off a mass exodus of fleeing passengers and airport workers. “I hear a person who truly believes that there’s an active shooter in that terminal, and he needs help”, he said.
CNN’s Paul Vercammen, reporting from the airport, said the man was involved in cosplay, or costume play. “An investigation, that included review of closed-circuit television footage, revealed that no shots were fired”.
What followed was pandemonium similar to an incident two weeks ago at JFK Airport in NY when a raucous celebration of an Olympics victory may have led to noises people believed were shots. Planes started taking off again about 10 p.m., but no flights were arriving. The whole episode was a mass delusion, set off by a loud noise and, possibly, by a fellow dressed as Zorro.
None was found. But the chaos had a cascading effect that took more than two hours to sort out, he said. The initial call came from Terminal 8 around 8:45 p.m. – about five minutes after officers detained the man dressed as Zorro.
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Another traveler – Corey Rosenbusch – told the AP he was relaxing inside a terminal club on a trip from Washington, D.C., to Sydney, Australia, when the lights went off in the area.
