Some passengers dispute the account of a Maitland man's airport shooting.
Mark Schlueb | Sentinel Staff Writer Posted December 9, 2005
<http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/orange/orl-planefolo0905dec09,0,3 421926.story?coll=orl-home-headlines>
Rigoberto Alpizar may have just been scared.
As more details emerged about Wednesday's anxious moments aboard American Airlines Flight 924, it became increasingly apparent that the Maitland man killed by federal air marshals may have been fleeing in panic as he suffered the symptoms of bipolar disorder.
To grieving relatives, two air marshals acted rashly and an innocent man died -- one whom at least seven passengers said they never heard say anything about a bomb.
"With all the advances that the U.S. has supposedly made in their war against terrorism, I can't conceive that the marshals wouldn't be able to overpower an unarmed, single man, especially knowing he had already cleared every security check," Carlos Alpizar said Thursday of his brother's death, in a telephone interview from Costa Rica.
"I will never accept that it was necessary to kill him as if he was some dangerous criminal. And I want to make this distinction: He did not die. He was killed."
But to federal authorities and security experts, Alpizar -- mentally ill or not -- was responsible for his own death.
"This threat presented itself, and we believe it was necessary to use deadly force. . . . There's no time in making these split-second decisions to analyze their mental health," said James E. Bauer, special agent in charge of the Federal Air Marshal Service's Miami field office.
Police in Miami-Dade County are investigating what is quickly becoming the most closely scrutinized day in the Federal Air Marshal Service's history.
Here's how the event unfolded, according to witnesses and police:
Alpizar, who worked at a Home Depot in east Orange County, and his wife, Anne Buechner, were among the last to board the American Airlines Boeing 757 bound for Orlando International Airport. They had arrived in Miami about two hours earlier on a flight from Ecuador, where they had traveled with one of Buechner's relatives, a dentist who was providing free care to children.
A few minutes before takeoff, Alpizar ran for the exit, jostling other passengers in the aisle.
A Miami-Dade police spokeswoman said Thursday that multiple witnesses reported that the 44-year-old was yelling that he had a bomb as he made his way down the aisle with a backpack slung across his chest. Later, the agency's chief of investigations insisted that Alpizar was yelling about a bomb but declined to say whether he was on the plane at the time.
Seven passengers interviewed by the Orlando Sentinel -- seated in both the front and rear of the main passenger cabin -- said Alpizar was silent as he ran past them on his way to the exit. One thought he had taken the wrong flight. Another thought he was going to throw up.
"I can tell you, he never said a thing in that airplane. He never called out he had a bomb," said Orlando architect Jorge A. Borrelli, who helped comfort Alpizar's wife after the gunfire. "He never said a word from the point he passed me at Row 9. . . . He did not say a word to anybody."
Two teens seated in Row 26 agreed. So did Jorge Figueroa, a power-plant operator from Lakeland seated a few rows behind first class.
"He wasn't saying anything; he was just running," Figueroa said. "I said to myself, 'It is probably a person who took the wrong plane.' "
Wife tried to explain
What Alpizar's fellow passengers did hear were the desperate explanations from Buechner, Alpizar's wife, who at first seemed embarrassed by her husband's hasty exit. She started to follow him off the plane, saying, "He's sick. He needs to get off the plane," witnesses said.
But she had forgotten her bag and turned back to retrieve it. That's when passengers heard yelling from the jetway.
Investigators say that two undercover air marshals followed Alpizar off the plane and ordered him to surrender. The marshals say Alpizar yelled that he had a bomb and would use it. He walked toward them, they backed up, he started to put his hands in his backpack, and they fired. Alpizar was hit by multiple shots fired by both officers.
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