Warnings missed before rampage
The FBI and police had warning signs of airport shooting suspect’s instability.
The FBI and police had indications of the Florida airport shooting suspect’s instability.
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Authorities in Anchorage confiscated a gun from the accused Fort Lauderdale airport shooter after he came to an FBI office in November acting bizarrely and speaking of “terroristic thoughts.” But police gave the weapon back to him.
New details raise troubling questions about why Esteban Santiago was allowed to have and keep a gun, and then check it on a flight.
Red flags were many in the months leading up to Friday’s rampage and even on the day Santiago boarded a plane to begin his journey to Fort Lauderdale. He bought a one-way ticket. Though traveling from wintry Alaska to balmy Florida, he stowed no luggage, checking only one item: a case containing a gun.
No gate agent or security official stood in his way.
Just two months earlier, he had told authorities he was delusional.
“Mr. Santiago had arrived at the FBI building asking for help,” Anchorage Police Chief Christopher Tolley said. “Santiago was having terroristic thoughts and believed he was being influenced” by Islamic State.
Yet Santiago was not on a government list of people prohibited from flying, set up after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
“During our initial investigation, we found no ties to terrorism,” said Marlin Ritzman, the agent in charge of the FBI’s office in Anchorage. “He broke no laws when he came into our office making comments about mind control.”
The 26-year-old Santiago, an Iraq war veteran and an Anchorage resident, was agitated and incoherent when he visited the FBI office Nov. 7. He had a loaded magazine on him, but left his gun and infant son in a car, Ritzman said. Santiago told agents he did not wish to harm anyone.
The FBI contacted the Anchorage Police Department, which transported Santiago to a mental health facility. The department took his weapon and “logged it into evidence for safekeeping,” Tolley said.
Authorities would not say whether it was the same semiautomatic handgun used to kill five people in Fort Lauderdale.
The FBI closed its assessment of Santiago after reviewing government databases and checking interactions with law enforcement around the country. “He was a walk-in complaint,” Ritzman said. “This is something that happens at FBI offices around the country every day.”
The Associated Press in Puerto Rico reported that Bryan Santiago questioned why his brother was allowed to have his gun when federal authorities knew he had become increasingly paranoid and was hearing voices.
“The FBI failed there,” he said. “We’re not talking about someone who emerged from anonymity to do something like this.”
The Associated Press said Esteban Santiago, after the incident at the FBI office, had been held four days for treatment and was released without medication or follow-up therapy.
Like many states, Alaska permits people to be held for up to 72 hours for a mental health evaluation. They can be committed longer with court approval.
Ten days after the visit to the FBI, on Nov. 17, police sent Santiago a letter asking him to pick up his gun, and an appointment was set for Nov. 30. When he showed up, however, the gun was not returned to him. Tolley did not say why. The firearm was finally released to him on Dec. 8, the police chief said.
Four weeks later, on Thursday night, Santiago boarded a Delta flight in Anchorage. Once in Fort Lauderdale, he recovered the gun at baggage claim, went into a bathroom, loaded the weapon and came out firing at people, police said.
Alaska U.S. Atty. Karen Loeffler said federal law required that a person be adjudicated mentally ill by a court in order to be prohibited from possessing a gun. She said she knew of nothing in Santiago’s background that fit that exclusion criteria.
Louis Cohen, an advocate with the Fort Lauderdale chapter of the Vietnam Veterans of America, said Delta employees should have questioned why a man “going to another climate from Alaska” had no suitcase and was checking only a handgun to Florida. “The answer could have been a clue,” he said.
Anchorage police had dealt often with Santiago in the preceding year. Tolley listed several police calls involving Santiago, but did not give specifics.
Court records show Santiago was charged in January 2016 in Alaska in a criminal mischief case involving the destruction of property and threats to an individual, a misdemeanor.
Prosecutors dropped the case in March as part of a deal in which he likely agreed to probation or some kind of treatment.
Media in Anchorage have described a case in which Santiago was accused by his girlfriend of bashing in a bathroom door, yelling and attempting to strangle her.
Federal law prohibits people with misdemeanor domestic violence convictions from possessing firearms, but the ban does not apply if the victim was not a spouse or the couple did not have a child together, said Hannah Shearer, staff attorney with the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence.
Records do not show a conviction against Santiago for domestic violence, and he became a father only in September.