Los Angeles: Police have confirmed that reports of an active shooter that panicked passengers on Sunday night inside several terminals at Los Angeles International Airport were false, authorities said.
Reports of gunfire in Terminals 6, 7 and 8 were made about 8.45pm, prompting airport police to set up a command post and shut down the central terminal area to incoming traffic.
As a further precaution, flight operations were stopped from 9 to 9.30pm on the airport’s two southern runways because passengers, who self-evacuated from the terminals, ran onto the restricted airfield.
Later in the evening, authorities prepared to allow passengers who fled from the terminals to re-enter baggage claim areas and gather the luggage they had left behind.
Actress Anne Dudek of Santa Monica was one of the travellers who fled from Terminal 7 after her United Airlines flight arrived about 8.30pm.
She said that she went down the escalator to baggage claim about 8.45pm and a man who appeared to be panicked ran by, warning everyone to run because he said people were being shot.
“People started dropping bags and running out of the terminal,” she said. “Panic spread.”
Dudek said she did not hear any shots, but decided to leave Terminal 7. She ran across the street, headed through the parking structure and made her way to the area near Southwest Airlines. She eventually reached her parked car and left the airport.
Authorities said all terminals, including the Tom Bradley International Terminal, had been cleared by Los Angeles Airport Police by 10.45pm and passengers were allowed to return.
Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said the chaos that unfolded at the airport appeared to be a case of old fashion panic and miscommunication that spread quickly.
“It’s almost like a game of telephone, by the time people were hearing things, I think they heard it was an active shooter ... that’s when chaos can break out,” Garcetti said on radio station KNX-AM (1070). “It wasn’t really the technology, it was just old fashion of one person yelling out to another and yelling to another.”
After an active shooting incident that happened two years ago at LAX, a system was put in place to send text messages to people, he said. However, law enforcement officials can’t send anything out until they know the situation is safe.
Within half an hour, there was 80 per cent certainty “that this was probably an incident resulted to some kind of mischief or misunderstanding of some young individuals that were in the terminal area,” Garcetti said.
All roads on the arrival and departure levels in the central terminal area also were reopened to traffic late Sunday night.
