Fort Lauderdale shooting: five killed and suspect identified as war veteran

[drunkenshoe]

Fort Lauderdale shooting: five killed and suspect identified as war veteran

Esteban Santiago, 26 â€" who had previously alerted the FBI to his disturbing thoughts â€" unpacked gun in baggage claim area and started firing, say police

The suspected gunman who shot and killed five people at a Florida airport with a weapon collected from his checked baggage was reportedly an Iraq war veteran known to the US authorities.

Eight more people were injured in the mass shooting, after which a suspect identified in reports as Esteban Santiago, 26, was taken into custody without any further shots being fired.

Broward county sheriff Scott Israel said the gunman was unharmed after his arrest. “No law enforcement fired shots. He is being interviewed by FBI agents and the sheriff’s office,” Israel added.

A witness said the suspect was taken into custody after throwing his empty weapon down and lying spread-eagled on the ground. He had arrived in Fort Lauderdale from Anchorage on board a Delta flight on Thursday night with a gun in checked luggage, said Jesse Davis, police chief at the Anchorage airport.

Asked about any possible terror motives, Israel said: “It’s too early to say either way.” Local media claimed the suspect had previously visited FBI offices in Anchorage, Alaska, and made disturbing statements.

At Fort Lauderdale, “after he claimed his bag, he went into the bathroom and loaded the gun and started shooting. We don’t know why,” said Chip LaMarca, a Broward county commissioner who was briefed by investigators.

Witnesses told news organisations the suspect used what appeared to be a 9mm handgun.

The attack is likely to raise questions of whether aviation safety officials need to change rules about passengers travelling with guns.

Firearms can legally be carried in checked baggage but must be unloaded and stored in a locked and hard-walled container, according to TSA rules. Ammunition and firearms must be declared to the airline when checking baggage.

While travellers have to take off their shoes, put their carry-on luggage through X-ray machines and pass through metal detectors to reach boarding gates, many other sections of airports, such as ticket counters and baggage claim areas, are more lightly secured and vulnerable to attack.

A law enforcement official told the Associated Press that Santiago had walked into the FBI office in Anchorage in November to say that the US government was controlling his mind and making him watch Islamic State videos.

Agents questioned an agitated and disjointed-sounding Santiago and then called police, who took him for a mental health evaluation, according to the official, who was not authorised to discuss the case and spoke on condition of anonymity.

FBI agent George Piro, who is in charge of the Miami field office, confirmed that Santiago had come into the Anchorage office and said he clearly indicated at the time that he was not intent on hurting anyone.

A military spokeswoman told the Associated Press that in 2016 Santiago received a general discharge from the Alaska army national guard for unsatisfactory performance. He had joined the guard in November 2014, she said, having previously served in the army reserves.

A spokesman for the Puerto Rico national guard, Major Paul Dahlen, said Santiago was deployed to Iraq in 2010 and spent a year there with the 130th Engineer Battalion, the 1013th engineer company out of Aguadilla.

Santiago’s brother, Bryan, told the Associated Press his brother had been receiving psychological treatment in Alaska. Santiago’s girlfriend alerted the family to the situation in recent months, he added.

Bryan Santiago said he didn’t know what his brother was being treated for and that they never talked about it over the telephone. He said Esteban Santiago was born in New Jersey but moved to Puerto Rico when he was two.

In a press conference at the airport, Rick Scott, Florida’s governor, condemned the shooting as “a senseless act of evil”.

“You just can’t imagine how this could ever happen in a great state like ours,” he said in a press conference at the airport. “Think of the innocent lives that are lost. We still have people fighting for their lives in our hospitals.

“Whoever is responsible will be held accountable to the full extent of the law. Let me repeat this, the state of Florida, the citizens of Florida, law enforcement, will not tolerate evil acts. My heart goes out to every family impacted. The families who lost their loved ones, and those with loved ones still in hospital fighting for their lives.”

Scott, a Republican, said he had “reached out” to president-elect Donald Trump and vice-president elect Mike Pence several times. “They told me that whatever resources we needed from the federal government, they would do everything in their power to make that happen,” he said.

In response to a reporter, Scott admitted he had neither contacted nor heard from President Obama. Asked why not, he responded: “I have a personal relationship with vice-president-elect Pence and President-elect Trump and I reached out to them.

“It’s horrible what happened here, it’s not time to be political, it’s a time to mourn those who lost their lives, finish the investigation and pray for everybody that’s still fighting for their lives.

“We went through Pulse, the biggest thing is pray for everyone in hospital, pray that everyone survives.”

Obama was briefed by his homeland security adviser, the White House said.

Scott was asked if the airport incident and the June 2016 shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, in which 49 people died, showed a need for stronger gun control laws in the state.

“It’s not a time to do politics,” he said again, adding that the state should “finish the investigation, mourn those who lost their life and pray for those who are still fighting for their life”.

President-elect Trump, meanwhile, used Twitter to say: “Monitoring the terrible situation in Florida. Just spoke to Governor Scott. Thoughts and prayers for all. Stay safe!”

Outside Trump Tower in Manhattan, Pence told reporters he and Trump were grateful for Scott’s leadership. “The hearts of every American are in Fort Lauderdale,” he said.

Earlier, the sheriff’s office said there was an active search for another gunman.

Barbara Sharief, mayor of Broward County, told CNN police had received reports of possible shots in an airport parking garage. People were seen to scatter and run along a runway, carrying baggage.

However, at the mid-afternoon press conference, the sheriff dismissed rumors of multiple gunmen. “At this point, there’s no second active shooter,” Israel said. “There’s been no shooting in any place else than in the downstairs of terminal two.”

All flights were temporarily suspended. “We’re just going to go step-by-step, methodically through the building before we go to any steps to reopen operations,” said airport director Mark Gale.

Shortly before 5pm, the sheriff’s office warned that a planned controlled explosion would take place near the airport, although it was unknown if the package related to the shooting.

Ari Fleischer, a former White House press secretary, was at the airport when the shooting occurred and tweeted what he could see.

“Shots have been fired,” he wrote, just before 1pm ET. “Everyone is running.” Twenty minutes later, he added: “All seems calm now but the police aren’t letting anyone out of the airport â€" at least not the area where I am.”

One witness told MSNBC the shooter as a slender man who was “directly firing at us” while passengers waited for their bags.

“I put my head down and prayed,” the witness said, adding that his wife had given first aid to someone who had been shot in the head. The witness’s mother-in-law tended to another victim but the person was already dead, he said.

[pr126]

Fort Lauderdale Airport shooter had told FBI he was forced to fight for the Islamic State

What could the motive be? We just don't know.

[drunkenshoe]

pr126's link is from https://www.jihadwatch.org/

Amazing example of journalism. 'Sources' told CBS that he was fighting for ISIL and that he told FBI he was forced to fight for ISIL and it is all Obama's fault, because he is a downplayer of IS, while jihadists are invading the USA and 'so many people' are trying to hide this fact. I am guessing 'so many people' is the code name of a possible jihadist organisation in the US and they are so successful they got FBI in their pockets via making a mentally ill veteran confess and then force him to commit a mass shooting.

It's not what the man is or not, he could be anything. It is the incredible bullshit people are ready to swallow and spread.

The jury is still out on Esteban Santiago, and we may never know the whole story if he is a jihadi, since so many people are so intent on concealing such facts, but in any case there is strong reason to believe that there is a jihad component here.

And why wasn’t the FBI watching him, when he told them he was ISIS? Maybe they also assumed he was insane, or they didn’t care to pursue such matters while Obama was busying downplaying the Islamic State threat, or there are simply too many young men out there like Esteban Santiago. And more are arriving all the time.

The suspected gunman behind the bloody rampage at a Florida airport previously told the FBI he had been forced to fight for ISIS, it has been reported.

Esteban Santiago-Ruiz is being held on suspicion of killing five people after opening fire at a baggage reclaim area at Fort Lauderdale on Friday.

The 26-year-old, an Iraq veteran, was known to the FBI, according to CBS News.

He is believed to have walked into the FBI office in Anchorage last November and told agents he was being forced to fight for ISIS, sources told CBS.

[Nonsensei]

Oh my god that article...and the comments!

Yes, the same one finger salute that obongo uses frequently…frankly, I prefer the middle finger salute for all islamics and their supporters…but that is just the ‘crude and vulgar’ me coming out.

How do you know you can disregard the contents of an entire website? Just look for the comment referring to Obama as Obongo.

[Baruch]

Fort Lauderdale Airport shooter had told FBI he was forced to fight for the Islamic State

What could the motive be? We just don't know.

We know in publicly admitted situations since 2001, that the FBI and CIA recruit stool pigeons for their false-flag operations.  Though they are supposed to arrest the entrapped fools before they act.  This may be one of those cases.  The stink still exists around the Boston Marathon terrorism (FBI and CIA fingerprints all over it).  It has been admitted in some quarters, that ISIS is the creation of the USA, as was Al Qaeda.  Fast & Furious Part II?  By our famously peaceful outgoing President?

[aitm]

the suspect was taken into custody after throwing his empty weapon down and lying spread-eagled on the ground

wrong color I suppose.

[pr126]

Digging deeper

Esteban Santiago == Aashiq Hammad

[Atheon]

Gotnews is a right-wing propaganda site.

In any case Esteban Santiago would be Safaniya Yaqoub in the language of what right-wingers call "Ay-rab Mooslims".

[Atheon]

We know in publicly admitted situations since 2001, that the FBI and CIA recruit stool pigeons for their false-flag operations.  Though they are supposed to arrest the entrapped fools before they act.  This may be one of those cases.  The stink still exists around the Boston Marathon terrorism (FBI and CIA fingerprints all over it).  It has been admitted in some quarters, that ISIS is the creation of the USA, as was Al Qaeda.  Fast & Furious Part II?  By our famously peaceful outgoing President?

You forgot the Illuminati and chemtrails.

[Atheon]

pr126's link is from https://www.jihadwatch.org/

Jihadwatch.

You'll never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy!

[The Skeletal Atheist]

Everything's a false flag and it's Muslims all the way down, welcome to another episode of PR and Baruch Derail a Thread With Crazy Bullshit! We are joined today by a live studio audience of homeless people that the CIA has dosed with LSD!

[drunkenshoe]

In Year Before Florida Shooting, Suspect’s Problems Multiplied

http://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/07/us/esteban-santiago-fort-lauderdale-airport-shooting-.html?_r=0

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. â€" Signs of Esteban Santiago’s unraveling had mounted over the past year. But it was not until early November, when he walked into an F.B.I. office carrying an ammunition clip â€" leaving a pistol and his infant son in his car â€" to complain about a C.I.A. plot against him, that his behavior became disturbing enough to earn him a short stay in a psychiatric hospital unit.

In the months before, the police were called repeatedly to his home about domestic disturbances, and the National Guard kicked him out because of “unsatisfactory performance” after nearly a decade of service. Mr. Santiago, an Iraq war veteran, increasingly spoke to relatives and associates about voices in his head that were tormenting him.

Then, a little before 1 p.m. Friday, Mr. Santiago, 26, turned up far from his Alaska home, in Terminal 2 of the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport. There, law enforcement officials said, he retrieved his checked luggage, pulled a 9-millimeter handgun out of his suitcase and used it to kill five people and wound six others, setting off a panic that shut down the airport.

After running out of ammunition, he lay spread-eagled on the floor, waiting quietly to be arrested, witnesses said.

Florida Airport Assailant May Have Heard Voices Urging Violence, Officials Say JAN. 6, 2017

How They Got Their Guns OCT. 3, 2015
Late Saturday afternoon, the United States attorney for the Southern District of Florida announced that Mr. Santiago had been arrested and charged on a federal criminal complaint “in connection with the deadly shooting of multiple victims at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport.” His first court appearance was scheduled for Monday morning before a federal magistrate in Fort Lauderdale.

Law enforcement officials said they had not determined a motive or cause for the attack. And while they said they could not exclude the possibility of terrorism, the initial investigation suggested that Mr. Santiago had acted alone and that there was no evidence that he had terrorist ties.

“It’s way too early for us to really rule out anything,” George Piro, the agent in charge of the F.B.I.’s Miami office, said at a news conference here on Saturday.

But family members said they had a pretty good idea of what led to the attack.

“He said he heard certain voices, that the U.S. government wanted to enroll him in certain groups for ISIS, and he was very paranoid,” Bryan Santiago Ruiz, an older brother of Mr. Santiago’s, said in an interview on Saturday in Peñuelas, the small town in Puerto Rico where they grew up.

Esteban Santiago lived in Anchorage, and Bryan Santiago said he had visited him there, most recently staying with him from August through October.

“He said that the C.I.A. controlled him through secret messages over the internet and told him the things he had to do,” he recalled.

It was on Nov. 7 that Esteban Santiago went to the F.B.I. office in Anchorage “to report that his mind was being controlled by U.S. intelligence agencies,” Marlin L. Ritzman, the agent in charge of the office, said on Saturday. “During the interview, Mr. Santiago appeared agitated, incoherent and made disjointed statements.”

Elaborating, a senior law enforcement official said Mr. Santiago had claimed that the C.I.A. put terrorist propaganda on his computer.

F.B.I. agents called the local police, who took him to a psychiatric facility.

“Santiago was having terroristic thoughts and believed he was being influenced by ISIS,” said Christopher Tolley, the Anchorage police chief, referring to the Islamic State.

When Mr. Santiago went into the F.B.I. office, he left a pistol and his newborn in his vehicle, Chief Tolley said, and he had an ammunition clip in his pocket.

The senior law enforcement official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the case publicly, said the gun was the same weapon used in the airport shooting on Friday.

The police confiscated the gun but returned it to Mr. Santiago in December, Chief Tolley said.

Bryan Santiago said his brother was held at the hospital for just a few days before being released and, as far as he knew, did not have any follow-up treatment, like medication or therapy.

The Fort Lauderdale airport reopened on Saturday, as the F.B.I. led an investigation that sprawled across the country and airport officials tried to reunite people with what they said were 20,000 items that had been recovered from the terminal, left behind by passengers and airport workers fleeing for their lives.

Esteban Santiago was born in New Jersey but was raised in Puerto Rico, where he joined the Puerto Rico National Guard in 2007 before he finished high school. A classmate said he had always wanted to be a soldier.

In 2010, Mr. Santiago was deployed to Iraq for nine months, working with the 130th Engineer Battalion clearing roads of improvised explosives and maintaining bridges, according to the Alaska Army National Guard. His company was awarded the Meritorious Unit Commendation.

Guard officials said at least two members of the company were killed in insurgent attacks during the tour, but there is no record indicating that Mr. Santiago was ever involved in combat.

Family members said Mr. Santiago was never quite the same after his return.

“After Iraq, something happened,” Hernan Rivera, 70, Mr. Santiago’s uncle, said Saturday afternoon as he stood in his driveway in Union City, N.J. “When he came back from Iraq, he was a different person.”

He described his nephew as a “normal kid” who enjoyed reading.

“He was a person who used to talk a lot,” Mr. Rivera said. “And then when he came back, he kept to himself, he’d go to his room, he wouldn’t talk to anybody.”

In 2014, Mr. Santiago moved to Alaska and joined the Alaska Army National Guard. He got a job as a security guard and found a girlfriend 14 years his senior. A few months ago, they had a baby; a law enforcement official said it was not clear whether that was the same child that he brought with him to the F.B.I. office in November.

In January 2016, the girlfriend told the police that Mr. Santiago had flown into a rage while she was using the bathroom, broke down the bathroom door and was “strangling her and smacking her in the side of the head” while screaming at her, according to a criminal complaint filed against him. A month later, he was charged with violating a court order to stay away from his girlfriend after the police found that he had been living with her again.

In March, a deferred judgment was entered in the case, meaning that it could be dismissed if he stayed out of trouble, but the signs of unrest continued.

Chief Tolley said that once in March and twice in October, Mr. Santiago was the subject of domestic disturbance calls, but each time, officers lacked the basis for making an arrest.

In August, Mr. Santiago, who had reached the rank of private first class and had won several commendations for his earlier National Guard service â€" including the Army Good Conduct Medal â€" was discharged by the Alaska Guard for “unsatisfactory performance.”

Despite the disturbing nature of the episode with the F.B.I. in November, it did not land Mr. Santiago on any law enforcement watch lists or on the federal “no-fly” list. Neither did it impede his right to possess a gun.

At a news conference on Saturday in Anchorage, officials with the F.B.I. and local law enforcement said that although Mr. Santiago was clearly incoherent during his encounter with F.B.I. agents, he was not deemed to be threatening.

In two other mass killings, perpetrators had drawn attention from the F.B.I. before carrying out their attacks.

Omar Mateen, who killed 49 people and wounded 53 others at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando in June, had fallen under F.B.I. scrutiny twice for possible ties to terrorism.

And Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the older of the two brothers who carried out the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013, was interviewed by agents looking into whether he had extremist tendencies, but their investigation of him ended there.

On Thursday night, Mr. Santiago boarded a flight in Anchorage, changed planes in Minneapolis on Friday morning, and flew into Fort Lauderdale. Law enforcement officials said that he had a semiautomatic handgun in his checked suitcase and that he followed all legal procedures for transporting the weapon. He went into a terminal restroom, took out the gun and loaded it, then returned to the baggage claim area and started shooting, officials said.

He apparently acted alone, Agent Piro said on Saturday, and “the early indication is that there was no specific reason that he chose Fort Lauderdale International Airport, but we’re still pursuing that and trying to really determine why he came here.”

“The suspect did cooperate with the interview team,” which Agent Piro described as a joint effort by the F.B.I. and the Broward County Sheriff’s Office. “The interview went over several hours and concluded sometime this morning.”

While people who knew Mr. Santiago recently saw anger, instability and paranoia, those who knew him earlier in his life had known someone very different.

Relatives and acquaintances in Puerto Rico remembered him as being quiet and shy â€" so reserved that in his hometown, Peñuelas, on the island’s southwest coast, few people knew anything about him.

Workers at the barbershop, the bakery and the furniture store, and parishioners at the churches near his family’s home, said they did not know Mr. Santiago or his family at all. At the police station, officers said they did not recognize him from the photograph that has been shown repeatedly on network and cable television since his arrest.

A neighbor of the family’s, Carlos Cruz, a man in his 50s who has lived in the neighborhood his entire life, said he remembered speaking with Mr. Santiago just once.

Those who did recall him described him as highly intelligent, kind and very quiet, part of a somewhat nerdy group who listened to American rock rather than music in Spanish. He spoke of joining the military, seeing it as a way out of the sleepy, economically stagnant region.

Rosemarie Zapata, 27, who attended middle school and high school with him, credited him with persuading her to join the Puerto Rico National Guard. At first, she failed the exam by two points, but it was Mr. Santiago who talked her into persevering and introduced her to his recruiter, she said.

“He told me, ‘Study, go, they will help us pay for college, so why don’t you try it out?’” she said. He convinced her that she could do it, saying, “You are going to defy all odds,” she recalled.

Years later, she ran into him in a Walgreens parking lot, shortly after he had returned from Iraq.

“He was very different,” she said in a telephone interview from Puerto Rico. “He told me: ‘You would never want to go to Iraq. I saw horrible things, horrible.’ He was very different. He was sad.”

Delia Candelario, who went to Josefa Vélez Bauzá High School with Mr. Santiago, said he played basketball with the best-behaved boys, who always followed the teachers’ orders.

“He was the most peaceful of all of them,” she said. “He participated in classes and all that, but he was pretty shy.”

Another classmate, Joshua Ortiz, said Mr. Santiago was so quiet that when word got out that someone from their school had committed a massacre, hardly anyone could remember his name.

Mr. Santiago and his friends were “never known to be involved in any problem or any fight during the whole time we were in school,” Mr. Ortiz said. “We wonder, how could his life have changed so much for this to have happened?”

José Hernández, who taught Mr. Santiago history at the school, said: “He was brilliant and did not show any indications of being disturbed. It’s one of those strange cases. There are students who you expect mischief from, but not this one.”

Sounds like text book paranoid schizophrenia, but what do we know anyway.

On a different note:

Another classmate, Joshua Ortiz, said Mr. Santiago was so quiet that when word got out that someone from their school had committed a massacre, hardly anyone could remember his name.

If that is true, that is actually the most alarming statement here in terms of American culture, imo. How many of the people who commited mass shootings share this trait I wonder.

[Baruch]

You forgot the Illuminati and chemtrails.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/08/us/fbi-isis-terrorism-stings.html?_r=0

Been happening multiple times since 9/11.  Here is the NYT on it, and they are Democrat gods ... who support the Democrat Empress, so they are not lying, right?

[Baruch]

Everything's a false flag and it's Muslims all the way down, welcome to another episode of PR and Baruch Derail a Thread With Crazy Bullshit! We are joined today by a live studio audience of homeless people that the CIA has dosed with LSD!

So there was never a Congressional investigation of CIA wrongdoing from the 50s-60s?

[The Skeletal Atheist]

In Year Before Florida Shooting, Suspect’s Problems Multiplied

http://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/07/us/esteban-santiago-fort-lauderdale-airport-shooting-.html?_r=0

Sounds like text book paranoid schizophrenia, but what do we know anyway.

On a different note:
If that is true, that is actually the most alarming statement here in terms of American culture, imo. How many of the people who commited mass shootings share this trait I wonder.

NO IT MUST BE MUSLIMS BECAUSE THIS WEBSITE I LINKED TO TOTALLY SAYS SO AND EVERY THING I DON'T LIKE IS ISIS!

So there was never a Congressional investigation of CIA wrongdoing from the 50s-60s?

MKULTRA is a well known thing that we actually have most of the declassified documents for, which is why I added that little reference to the LSD...but what if that was all faked? A false flag to investigate the effects of a massive secret conspiracy being revealed would have on the populace? *cue Twilight Zone theme*

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/08/us/fbi-isis-terrorism-stings.html?_r=0

Been happening multiple times since 9/11.  Here is the NYT on it, and they are Democrat gods ... who support the Democrat Empress, so they are not lying, right?

So stings = false flags to you? I have a feeling that you don't get how stings actually work.