Some passengers at a Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) terminal went out fire doors and onto the tarmac today, because a man who had threatened to kill himself at a cargo terminal was chased by police into the central terminal area.
Fears escalated when someone Tweeted that there was a man with a gun at Terminal 2, a rumor that police immediately knocked down.
The brief chaos began about 9 a.m. when a man threatened suicide at the the Japan Cargo building, 6041 Imperial Hwy, explained LAX Airport police spokeswoman Sgt. Belinda Joseph.
“The man initially refused to respond to the officers who came there to help him,” Joseph told City News Service. “During the incident, the man suddenly ran from the officers, got into a vehicle and tried to flee the scene.”
A short vehicle pursuit ensued, and officers stopped the man’s car on the upper level roadway at Terminal 2, and convinced him to cooperate with them. The unidentified man was then taken to a hospital for observation and treatment, she said.
While this was going on, she said, someone put out a Tweet saying there was a man with a gun at Terminal 2.
“But that was completely inaccurate,” Joseph said. “There never was anyone with a gun out at Terminal 2.”
During this confusion some of the passengers who had already been screened “self-evacuated” themselves onto the airfield, she told CNS. Those passengers, she continued, remained under constant observation by airport police and were eventually moved back into a screened waiting area.
All screening stations and other Terminal 2 services were operating normally as of 11 a.m., she said.
