Friday, December 09, 2005
"I never heard the word 'bomb'". posted by Richard Seymour
Time Magazine:At least one passenger aboard American Airlines Flight 924 maintains the federal air marshals were a little too quick on the draw when they shot and killed Rigoberto Alpizar as he frantically attempted to run off the airplane shortly before take-off.
"I don't think they needed to use deadly force with the guy," says John McAlhany, a 44-year-old construction worker from Sebastian, Fla. "He was getting off the plane." McAlhany also maintains that Alpizar never mentioned having a bomb.
"I never heard the word 'bomb' on the plane," McAlhany told TIME in a telephone interview. "I never heard the word bomb until the FBI asked me did you hear the word bomb. That is ridiculous." Even the authorities didn't come out and say bomb, McAlhany says. "They asked, 'Did you hear anything about the b-word?'" he says. "That's what they called it."
When the incident began McAlhany was in seat 24C, in the middle of the plane. "[Alpizar] was in the back," McAlhany says, "a few seats from the back bathroom. He sat down." Then, McAlhany says, "I heard an argument with his wife. He was saying 'I have to get off the plane.' She said, 'Calm down.'"
Alpizar took off running down the aisle, with his wife close behind him. "She was running behind him saying, 'He's sick. He's sick. He's ill. He's got a disorder," McAlhany recalls. "I don't know if she said bipolar disorder [as one witness has alleged]. She was trying to explain to the marshals that he was ill. He just wanted to get off the plane."
McAlhany described Alpizar as carrying a big backpack and wearing a fanny pack in front. He says it would have been impossible for Alpizar to lie flat on the floor of the plane, as marshals ordered him to do, with the fanny pack on. "You can't get on the ground with a fanny pack," he says. "You have to move it to the side."
And:
The two marshals say Alpizar announced he was carrying a bomb before being killed. But, no other witness has publicly agreed with that account.
And yet, the claim has been reported uncritically in many quarters. The investigation is apparently, focussing on the man's "wild rage" (incidentally, note that this report claims that "witnesses differ" as to whether Alpizar made the alleged threat, but can't find a single witness to support the claim by James Bauer and the air marshalls). Bauer, the special agent in charge of the air marshalls in this case, is trying to tell the story in a slightly different way now: "At some point, he uttered threatening words that included a sense that, in fact, that he had a bomb." Now what words could they be, I wonder? Somehow, "I've got to get off this plane" doesn't sound to me like the cri de coeur of a bomber, especially if he happens to take the putative explosive with him.
Alpizar was a missionary, not a would-be bomber. Yet, how quick they are to slander the dead.