Shooting at Florida Fort Lauderdale airport, 4 dead and 13 injured

[Papenbrook]

My thoughts are with the civilians who were personally impacted by the tragedy.

I can't fathom why someone would do this.

[sdp]

Originally Posted by Powder

Legal citizens have nothing to worry about.

Maybe his friends/family are in a specific situation to worry about and he does have to worry.

Originally Posted by CyberCubed

I expect airport security in the U.S. to tighten up severely in the next couple of months. Usually when stuff like this happens at airports they change their whole security routine.

Don't you work at an airport? Some insight on how things are handled would be interesting.

[Katie]

He's Puerto Rican so there's no illegal worries.

Dude has PTSD or Schizophrenia. Apparently he belives that the FBI was sending voices to his head and compelling him to watch ISIS videos.

He's a decorated American soldier.

Shame that our mental health system is so broken that we can't help these broken minds that the war has created.

[MsMarvelDuckie]

Originally Posted by Candy Kappa

Oh, USA have been deporting legal citizens long before Trump was a thing

Especially in the 30's and 40's where half of the people that got deported was US citizens.

and then there's this guy...
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/20...tation-machine

Oh I know, which is one of the reasons I said that. But I suspect that once he takes office it will be far worse- probably on the scale of those deportations from the 40's.

Originally Posted by plastroncafe

Unless they're brown and don't have papers on them to prove that they're legal citizens all the time.

Be curious to see what, if any, changes come from this. Not to mention how the Gun Lobby will spin it. Maybe we should allow MORE guns in the airport? Maybe more good guys with guns at the airport?

I will say I'll be right pissed if people can bring guns to the airport, but I still need to take off my damn shoes, not travel with water, or have to get the first-date pat down.

Exactly. It would be a witch hunt, just like after 9-11. I feel badly for everyone who has been hurt by this, as well as anyone who gets unfairly singled out because of it. And it is a shame this guy wasn't helped sooner before he did it.

[Prowler]

Fearing mongering much? A nutcase killed some people at an airport and that's basically it. A few days later no one will remember this anymore. I'm sure he wasn't the first Latino shooting several people at a time in USA's history. Just like that VA tech shooter didn't make everyone all of a sudden hate Koreans.

[Original TMNT Cartoon Fan]

Has any videogame been blamed yet, as ut uses to be?

[TigerClaw]

There's video of the shooter
http://www.tmz.com/2017/01/08/ft-lau...t-shots-video/

[Prowler]

Originally Posted by Original TMNT Cartoon Fan

Has any videogame been blamed yet, as ut uses to be?

This isn't the 90s anymore.

[Klunk1234]

The gunman is an Irak war veteran. His family reported he was having allucitations of being recruited by ISIS. He is crazy and now his brother is blaming the government for not provide this veteran psychiatric treatment, as soon he arrived to the United States.

Five people had have lost their lives due to the attack. The airport should increase security. It's really scary.

[Original TMNT Cartoon Fan]

Originally Posted by Prowler

This isn't the 90s anymore.

Videogames have been blamed for violence all the time.

[plastroncafe]

Originally Posted by Klunk1234

The gunman is an Irak war veteran. His family reported he was having allucitations of being recruited by ISIS. He is crazy and now his brother is blaming the government for not provide this veteran psychiatric treatment, as soon he arrived to the United States.

Five people had have lost their lives due to the attack. The airport should increase security. It's really scary.

Increasing security isn't going to stop something like this.
Better access to mental health services is how we stop something like this.

But we'll likely get increased security, because it's cheaper to pay rent-a-cops than it is to provide our service men and women quality care.

[Refractive Reflections]

The bigger issue here, I think, is the accessibility of weapons from an individual who already had a history of severe mental illness (especially with violent proclivities) and the lack of treatment. And why he wasn't on the no-fly list to begin with. Enforcement is a bigger issue here rather than more stringent laws.

When an individual is that committed toward violence, if he wasn't allowed to use a handgun, he could of used anything else such as a van to plow into a crowd (similarly with a truck in Nice, France) into the baggage claim area or carry a container of explosives disguised as luggage (similar to the 2016 Brussels Airport terrorist attack) while pretending to be a passenger who's late for a flight into the luggage check-in area.

[plastroncafe]

He's ex-military. He's going to have access to weapons.
And threatening to take weapons away from someone who's ex-military because of mental issues will just make them not report and/or seek help for those issues.

He'd just gotten off a flight from Alaska, so he didn't need to pretend to be a passenger...he was a passenger.

[Refractive Reflections]

Originally Posted by plastroncafe

He's ex-military. He's going to have access to weapons.
And threatening to take weapons away from someone who's ex-military because of mental issues will just make them not report and/or seek help for those issues.

Whether he's ex-military or not, since he was previously committed to a psychiatry hospital for being a danger to himself or others, should have been the obvious red flag here to law enforcement.

The man accused of shooting five people to death Friday at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport walked into an FBI office two months ago in a "very agitated state" and told agents the government had taken over his mind, law enforcement sources said.

Esteban Santiago, 26, came to the FBI's Anchorage, Alaska, office and was "acting crazy," telling agents he was being subjected to mind control. He was committed to a psychiatric hospital as a danger to himself or others, the sources said.

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/for...106-story.html

His gun was temporarily confiscated:

Gun had been confiscated

Federal authorities were familiar with Santiago. He'd set off red flags just weeks ago.

He visited an Alaska FBI office in November, saying his mind was being controlled by US intelligence. He left a gun in the car.

(Previously, authorities said Santiago also left a newborn in the car, but Anchorage FBI spokeswoman Staci Feger-Pellessier walked that back Sunday, saying Santiago had his child with him when he walked into the FBI office, and "the child was in constant custody and care of the FBI, inside our facility, until his mother retrieved him.")

The Army veteran's rambling walk-in interview at the Anchorage office was concerning enough for authorities to take away his gun and order a mental health evaluation. But it wasn't enough to get him mentally adjudicated, which would have prohibited Santiago from owning a firearm.

Santiago got the gun back a month later when he retrieved the pistol from police headquarters, and it was that weapon, law enforcement sources told CNN, that he used in the airport attack.

"As far as I know, this is not somebody that would have been prohibited based on the information that (authorities in Alaska) have. I think that law enforcement acted within the laws that they have," said US Attorney Karen Loeffler.

Santiago also had some legal trouble and was due in court in March.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/08/us/for...ain/index.html

...But apparently it wasn't enough to bar him from owning a firearm. It would be interesting to see what the criteria was considered, for him to be competent enough to own a firearm. I wonder if those same people who evaluated him, also spoke with his family members (of what they heard Santiago discussing to them) because it's portraying quite a composite of Santiago's mental health. But maybe it's easier to notice because it's from hindsight.

Originally Posted by plastroncafe

He'd just gotten off a flight from Alaska, so he didn't need to pretend to be a passenger...he was a passenger.

To clarify, even if he wasn't a passenger and was forbidden from flying and owning a gun, he could have performed those stated actions to cause destruction at the Anchorage airport.

[RaphaelsIsolation]

Weird how it was a immigrant though right?

At least he was a US citizen right?

I pray for those families that were affected. Horrible.

[BubblyShell22]

Whether he was a citizen or not doesn't matter. What matters is that he was mentally unstable and did a terrible thing because he didn't get the treatment that he needed and no one really did anything about it even though he was showing signs of his instability beforehand. It's sad how broken our mental health system is and how people who need treatment aren't able to get it.

My heart goes out to all of those affected by this tragedy.

[Jephael]

I can't help but wonder if there will ever come a day we'll have other means of transportation similar to buses and trains that'd hopefully prevent anymore these kinds of horrific incidents from continuing to happen. You'd think somebody would look into the idea of creating more subterranean travel, ala subway cars.

[BubblyShell22]

I don't think even that would prevent something bad happening. Anybody could do anything these days and different modes of transportation aren't really the way to solve the problem. What needs to happen is that we need a better mental health system so our veterans can get treated and get help before something drastic happens.

[Jephael]

Originally Posted by BubblyShell22

What needs to happen is that we need a better mental health system so our veterans can get treated and get help before something drastic happens.

Not only that, but they also need to quit looking towards idiotic scapegoats like video games and internet chatrooms. People have doing f*cked up stuff like this way before those came around. I'd love to know who or what the stupid news media considered blaming for the Charles Manson killings back in the day.

[Jester]

Didn't they blame the Beatles?