Shooter paged to pick up his gun

Final report on airport killings gives more details about public service announcement, responder communication flaws

FORT LAUDERDALE — After waiting for several minutes at a baggage carousel, Esteban Santiago heard his name called over a public address system. Delta Airlines was paging him to come to a service desk to pick up his gun — in the only container he had checked for the flight.

Minutes later he went on to kill five people and wound six at the Fort Lauderdale airport on Jan. 6.

The page by Delta is a new, jarring detail not previously known in the sad saga of the deadliest shooting at a U.S. airport. It is part of a 30-page report released Friday by the Broward Sheriff ’s Office. The airline declined comment.

The report is the sheriff’s office’s final review of its actions on that tumultuous day, when passengers from all terminals fled in panic over erroneous reports of an additional shooter.

The agency provided this latest report in response to repeated requests by the Sun Sentinel for its release.

The report sheds some new light on the extent of the radio problems police and fire personnel encountered in trying to communicate that day when thousands of state, local and federal officials converged on the airport to answer a call for backup.

At one point, the crush of users sent the radio system into a “fail-soft” mode, and all

connections between responding agencies were lost, the report states. Dispatchers were unable to quickly reconnect the groups and told “all units to stop transmitting until the radio bridges could be restored.”

That took about four minutes, but the system began to “throttle,” resulting in garbled transmissions in which sheriff’s deputies and fire officials could hear only parts of words or phrases.

The radio problems exacerbated an already chaotic event. Santiago was caught by a sheriff ’s deputy within minutes. But an hour-anda-half later, false reports of additional gunfire unleashed bedlam. A U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer thought he heard shots and relayed the information to a BSO fire rescue captain who broadcast it over the radio as: “Border Patrol reporting shots fired in Terminal 2.”

“The words ‘shots fired’ spread throughout the airport and triggered pandemonium as thousands of travelers, airline and airport employees began to escape from the concourses, gates, baggage claim areas, curbside loading areas and parking garages of all four terminals,” the report states.

In an introduction to the report, Sheriff Scott Israel says the review is an effort to “objectively review and assess” its response to the day’s events. But the report is much shorter and far less critical of the Sheriff’s Office or of airport officials than a 99-page draft report released in June at the Sun Sentinel’s request.

That report faulted sheriff ’s office for failing to seize control and set up an effective command system. The confusion about who was in charge led to more problems and chaos as more than 2,000 law enforcement officers responded to help. Many abandoned their cars just outside and inside the airport, clogging roads and hindering evacuations. Passengers were stranded for hours on the tarmac and on airport roads.

Under “opportunities for improvement,” the report recommends:

Police should escort federal baggage screeners to another location without causing widespread panic. The report chides baggage screeners with the Transportation Security Administration for fleeing the checkpoints, saying if they had not run “we may not have had a self-evacuation of the entire airport.” TSA workers, who are unarmed, are trained to run or hide in such a threat, unless forced to fight.

Law enforcement should wear earpieces so passengers don’t overhear police radio broadcasts and misinterpret the conversations. Authorities should quickly reopen at least one terminal so passengers can get out of the heat or rain, access restrooms, and reduce anxiety.

Officers responding from other agencies should report to “staging areas,” identified beforehand, to receive assignments, rather than “self-dispatching.”

BSO and airport officials must ensure that command structures are followed and that in a criminal incident “BSO is clearly designated the lead agency.”

Technology must be updated and expanded to ensure better communication. The county is already in the process of replacing its antiquated radio system.

The report points out flaws in prior training efforts by the Broward Sheriff’s Office, airport personnel and others in preparing for such a disaster. For example, it says it’s “easy to say that you are ordering buses to come and evacuate people” but must also determine who will order them and from where.

The report concludes by praising the bravery of police and fire officials and extols the leadership of Israel, the FBI, airport officials and others, saying that because of them “this tragic event was mitigated and investigated in an extraordinary manner.”

Santiago