Loaded Pistol is Found Past Security Position: West Concourse Evacuated; Federal Probe is Launched

By Dale Quinn and Andrea Kelly, The Arizona Daily Star, Tucson

Oct. 5–A loaded handgun found in a men’s restroom past the security checkpoint at Tucson International Airport forced the evacuation of the west concourse Thursday morning and launched a federal investigation, officials said.

An airport maintenance worker found the gun in a wastebasket about 9:15 a.m., said Christopher White, a Transportation Security Administration spokes-man. The agency is investigating how the gun got there and whom it belonged to, White said.

Any indication of what happens next or whether any airport security measures could change would be speculative, as the incident is still under investigation, said Nico Melendez, also a TSA spokesman.

The agency is not saying whether the gun has been traced to a registered owner nor if officials know how it got past the security checkpoint.

“It’s too early to tell. We know this happened and we’re looking into it,” Melendez said.

About 200 people were evacuated after the gun was found, the concourse was searched and the passengers were rescreened before being allowed back into the boarding area, White said.

Passengers in gates 3 through 14 were evacuated. The entire process took about 30 minutes, said Paula Winn, a Tucson Airport Authority spokeswoman.

The discovery of the gun did not affect flights scheduled to take off Thursday afternoon, Winn said.

All airports go through regular security testing, in which covert teams go through the security checkpoint, said Melendez. In some airports the teams go through security several times a day, sometimes every day, he said. In any case, it happens hundreds of times a year at each airport, he said.

Those who go through the checkpoints to audit the security enforcement are from the TSA, the Department of Homeland Security and the Government Accountability Office, Melendez said.

Operations at the airport appeared to be returning to normal early in the afternoon, and some passengers had no idea the gun had been found there just hours earlier.

Russ Ward, 42, who lives in Sierra Vista, was waiting at the airport with his daughter, Savannah, 16, who was flying to Syracuse, N.Y.

He found it surprising that someone might be able to get a gun past the security checkpoint. It could mean “somebody was actually trying to prove the security was weak,” he said.

“The fact that there’s more security doesn’t make me feel any safer,” he said.

Still, Ward said he didn’t worry about the safety of his daughter on her flight, because he said he trusts her to be able to take care of herself.

Ward also said he was reassured by the fact that the airport dealt with the problem quickly without affecting later flights.

Alex Masson, 72, who described himself as a frequent traveler, also found it surprising that a gun was discovered in the secure part of the airport.

“In all airports there’s still a lot of looseness,” he said as he waited for a flight out of Tucson.

He also was not alarmed when he heard the gun had been found, especially because it was in a wastebasket.

“If you can see a gun in a trash can, you’ve got to think someone’s getting rid of it,” he said.

Airlines failed to detect hand grenades, dynamite sticks, pipe bombs and other weapons at Tucson International Airport and Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport at least 60 times from 1996 to 2000.

Federal Aviation Administration inspectors slipped those inert weapons past screening checkpoints to test security, the Arizona Daily Star found by reviewing enforcement actions in an FAA database shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Since then, amid other steps to improve security, the federal government stopped releasing the enforcement data to journalists and others. That makes it harder for the public to assess whether an airport is secure. Journalists are appealing that decision.

The 60 screening failures attributed to eight airlines were only part of the security lapses documented in the earlier FAA data on Arizona. Other lapses included failure to restrict access to sensitive areas of the airports and failure to display employee identification.

–Star reporter Enric Volante contributed to this story. Contact reporters Dale Quinn at 629-9412 or dquinn@azstarnet.com; or Andrea Kelly at 573-4243 or akelly@azstarnet.com.

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