LAX Operations Returning to Normal, Alleged Shooter Still Unconscious

By City News Service

Operations at Los Angeles International Airport are moving back to normal Monday, but the shock to the world's airline system is still reverberating, with crews and planes out of position, authorities said.

On Sunday, passengers returned to LAX's Terminal 3 to pick up their abandoned belongings. Drivers also were allowed to pick up their cars in the terminal's parking garage.

Many would-be passengers still were stranded in the Los Angeles area or elsewhere, due to a weekend full of canceled flights and ruined flight schedules nationally and internationally.

At Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, accused shooter Paul Anthony Ciancia remained unconscious and under guard.

The Justice Department has filed a charge of murder of a federal official against Ciancia in the Friday morning shooting death of TSA officer Gerardo Hernandez. Ciancia, 23, also faces a charge of commission of violence at an American airport.

Under federal law and policy, Justice Department officials in Washington, D.C., will evaluate the case to determine if they will seek life in federal prison without parole or the death penalty for Ciancia if he is convicted.

"His intention was very, very clear," said David Bowdich, FBI special agent in charge. "He indicated his anger and his malice, I would say, to TSA officers."

The FBI has been unable to interrogate Ciancia, hospitalized with four gunshot wounds, including one to his head.

"He has been receiving medical treatment, but at this point, he is unresponsive," Bowdich said.

Bowdich said Ciancia was the lone gunman who killed Hernandez, shot and injured four others and caused two others to be injured in the ensuing panic.     The chief federal prosecutor for Los Angeles, Andre Birotte Jr., said Ciancia was armed with a Smith and Wesson .223 caliber M&P assault rifle and carried five loaded magazines into the terminal.

Ciancia also carried a signed, handwritten note, Birotte said.   A woman acquainted with Ciancia and his roommates said in a broadcast report that she was present Friday morning when Ciancia asked a roommates for a ride to LAX.

"That morning, he doesn't knock, he just opens the door and says, 'I need to leave. Can you take me now?" she said in a report shown on ABC7.

The woman -- who requested anonymity -- said a short time after Ciancia and the roommate left for the airport, police arrived at the residence looking for Ciancia.

"They heard that Paul was suicidal and they needed to do a welfare check on him," she said.

She said the roommate who took Ciancia to LAX was unaware of his deadly plans, not finding out about the shooting spree until arriving back at the home and seeing televised accounts of it.

Ciancia hunted down Transportation Security Administration officers and had written that he wanted to instill fear into the "traitorous minds" of TSA officers, Bowdich said.

The first TSA agent to be killed in the line of duty, Hernandez, of Porter Ranch, was working in the pre-screening area, the first line of defense on the upper level ticketing hall.

Bowdich said video shows Ciancia shooting Hernandez "multiple times and at point blank range" before going up a short escalator to the inspection area.

He then walked back down the escalator to again shoot Hernandez, according to Bowdich.

The agency has requested anyone at the airport who shot images or made recordings to upload them to a specific website: https://laxshootingtips.fbi.gov

Information can also be submitted by phone through a tip line: (888) 226- 8443.

City Councilman Mike Bonin called the airport police officers' response to the shooting "textbook," and saved "untold lives."