WHAT HAPPENED ON FLIGHT 924?….There’s something screwy about the story of Rigoberto Alpizar, who was shot by air marshals on Wednesday. Here’s one account from CNN:
Dave Adams, a spokesman for the Federal Air Marshal Service, said Alpizar had run up and down the plane’s aisle yelling, “I have a bomb in my bag.”
Here’s a second version from AP:
Before he ran off the plane he “uttered threatening words that included a sentence to the effect that he had a bomb,” said James E. Bauer, agent in charge of the Federal Air Marshal Service field office in Miami.
And here’s a couple of passenger quotes from the CNN story:
[Alan] Tirpak said he didn’t hear Alpizar himself say anything.
….Like Tirpak, [Mike] Beshears said he did not hear Alpizar say anything. “He just was in a hurry and exited the plane,” he said.
The marshals might have acted perfectly properly. I don’t know, and neither does anyone else at this point. But can we at least get the truth about what Alpizar did? Did he run up and down the plane’s aisle yelling, “I have a bomb in my bag,” did he merely mutter a “sentence to the effect” that he had a bomb, or did he just run off the plane? There’s a big difference, and it shouldn’t be hard for the FAMS spokesmen to give us the straight dope about this.
