Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
5 life terms for airport shooter
5 killed in ‘85 seconds of evil’
Esteban Santiago was mentally ill — but legally sane — when he pulled out a gun, killed five people and injured six others in January 2017 at Fort Lauderdale’s main airport.
He immediately told agents that voices in his head were giving him orders. He later made unsubstantiated claims that he had acted in support of the Islamic State terrorist group.
On Friday, his attorneys said Santiago — who has since been diagnosed with schizophrenia — was experiencing psychotic symptoms and thought he was being commanded to do what he did. Now that he’s been stabilized with the right medication, he is genuinely remorseful, they said.
But the man described as a “good soldier” when he served in the Iraq War will spend the rest of his life in federal prison for carrying out the deadliest airport shooting in U.S. history. Santiago, 28, was sentenced to five life sentences plus 120 years.
His rampage at the airport was “85 seconds of evil,” U.S. District Judge Beth Bloom told Santiago. “It is difficult, if not impossible, for this court to separate the evil in your acts from the evil
in the man.”
Friday’s sentencing was the last chapter in a saga that began 19 months ago when Santiago landed in Fort Lauderdale on a one-way flight from Anchorage, Alaska. He had checked nothing but his 9 mm gun and two sets of ammunition. He picked up the weapon from a Delta Air Lines employee, loaded the gun in a restroom and began firing at the people near the baggage carousels. When he ran out of ammunition, he paused and reloaded, then fired all of the rounds in the second magazine at his victims.
When Santiago ran out of bullets, he lay down on the floor and surrendered to a Broward sheriff ’s deputy. The shooting and the panicked aftermath sent the airport into chaos.
Santiago, who now has a thick beard and a closely shaved head, spoke only to say “yes” or “no” to the judge’s questions in court on Friday.
Several victims who spoke during the 90-minute court hearing told him he had senselessly robbed them of their loved ones. Survivors said he left them traumatized and fearful of leaving their homes and going into public places.
“Gone in a second from a bullet, you do not get a chance to say goodbye,” said Melissa Beauchamp, whose mom, Mary Louise Amzibel, 69, was murdered. “We did not get a chance to say ‘we love you.’ … Nothing is the same as before.”
As Beauchamp spoke, she was flanked by her brother, Edward, and their dad, also named Edward Amzibel, who was severely injured when Santiago shot him in the face.
Santiago fired 15 bullets, aiming at victims’ heads and bodies in the crowded baggage carousel area at lunchtime on Jan. 6, 2017, in Terminal 2 at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport.
The five people killed in the rampage were: Mary Louise Amzibel, 69; Michael Oehme, 56; Olga Weltering, 84; Shirley Timmons, 70; and Terry Andres, 62. Four men and two women, including the spouses of Amzibel, Oehme and Timmons, were seriously injured.
Some of the victims who spoke in court showed extraordinary empathy and compassion for the former Army reservist, who served with a National Guard unit in Iraq.
James Steckley, speaking on behalf of his wife, Julie, who was seriously injured but survived, apologized to Santiago for what he called the “lack of concern” shown to military veterans who serve in war zones but are expected to return to normal life.
“I truly felt sorrow for you in my heart because I truly don’t believe you were born a killer,” James Steckley told Santiago. “I’m sorry that the opportunities for help didn’t help you.”
Julie Steckley, now 58, of Horn Lake, Miss., was shot through the shoulder. Since the attack, she has panic attacks in crowded areas, struggles with depression and has difficulty leaving her home.
Some called Santiago a coward and struggled to understand how a man trained to protect the people of the United States had turned his gun on innocent, mostly older Americans who were picking up their luggage at the airport on their way to board cruise ships for family vacations and to celebrate birthdays.
All of the victims’ next of kin told prosecutors that they did not want Santiago to face the death penalty, for a variety of reasons. Some said they oppose execution on principle; some said they did not want to go through a long traumatic trial and the years of appeals it would require; and others said they hope Santiago lives a long, miserable life in prison.
The victims’ and survivors’ wishes, Santiago’s mental health issues and his military service were among the issues that weighed heavily in Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ decision not to seek the death penalty, prosecutors Ricardo Del Toro and Lawrence LaVecchio told the judge.
Santiago was briefly hospitalized for psychiatric care in Alaska in November 2016, just two months before the shooting, after he drove to the FBI office in Anchorage. He asked for help and told agents that he was hearing voices and thought the government was controlling his mind.
In May, Santiago pleaded guilty to 11 charges in an agreement with federal prosecutors that spared him from facing the death penalty. The judge waited until she heard from the victims on Friday before she agreed to formally accept his guilty pleas.
When the judge questioned Santiago in May, he struggled to explain why he killed, replying: “Umm, I don’t know. I wasn’t really thinking about it at the moment. A lot of things were going on in my mind. Messages.”
Santiago was found legally competent to plead guilty after a psychologist examined him in prison.
Though Santiago did not address the victims in court, his defense team said he asked them to apologize to all of the families whose loved ones were murdered and everyone who was injured and traumatized by the chaos that followed at the airport.
“There is nothing we can do to make the pain go away,” Eric Cohen, one of the assistant federal public defenders representing Santiago, told the victims and the judge. Santiago asked the defense team to try to explain and give the victims as many answers as possible, he said, in the hope that it would help them in some way.
“Although he committed a horrible act, there are indications he is not a horrible person,” Cohen said.
Less than 24 hours after Santiago was arrested, the defense said he told a psychiatrist at the Broward County Main Jail that he had been “receiving orders as to what to do.” He was still in the grip of psychotic symptoms at the time, they said.
Federal prosecutors acknowledged that Santiago, who was born in New Jersey and grew up in Puerto Rico, served his country well during his time in the military. But he did not show up for medical appointments at a Veterans Administration hospital and did not follow through on psychiatric care recommended after he was hospitalized in Alaska, they said.
They also said Santiago may have exacerbated his psychiatric problems by abusing hallucinogenic drugs — including the street drugs Spice, LSD and mushrooms — after he returned home from Iraq.
Santiago, though mentally troubled, exhibited signs of extensive premeditation, they said. He bought the only item of luggage he checked — a hard-sided firearm case used to legally pack a 9 mm handgun and two loaded ammunition clips — eight days before the attack. He bought the one-way ticket from Anchorage, Alaska, where he lived at the time, to Fort Lauderdale, three days ahead of time. And they said he got rid of many of his personal belongings as if he was preparing for the end of his life. Among the discarded items was a note reminding him to wipe out or remove the contents of his computer, and authorities said he replaced his old hard drive with a new one.
“This was not a situation where someone with a mental illness just snapped,” Del Toro said. “At the time of the offenses, he was sane.”
On Friday, Judge Bloom also appeared to express some skepticism when she revealed some previously unknown details of what Santiago told investigators after he surrendered.
Santiago said “I don’t feel anything” immediately after the shooting and said he didn’t know if he would do it again. When asked then if he felt any remorse, she said that he told the investigators: “Not really.”