Word: alpizar
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Rigoberto Alpizar did not even want to get on American Airlines Flight 924 from Miami to Orlando, Fla., last week. And just minutes before the flight was scheduled to depart, he decided to get off. "I heard an argument with his wife," said John McAlhany, who was seated in the center of the plane, several rows ahead of Alpizar and his wife Anne Buechner. "He was saying 'I have to get off the plane.' She said, 'Calm down.'" Instead, Alpizar got out of his seat and, clutching a backpack, ran off the plane. Two federal air marshals onboard the flight...
...major controversy centered on whether Alpizar said he had a bomb as he rushed off the plane. Dave Adams, a spokesman for the Federal Air Marshal Service, said Alpizar "was carrying the backpack and walking down the aisle yelling 'I've got a bomb in the backpack.'" But several passengers recall events differently. "I never heard the word bomb on the plane," says McAlhany, a construction worker from Sebastian, Fla., who notes, "I don't think they needed to use deadly force with the guy. He was getting off the plane." Jorge Borrelli, an Orlando architect who was also...
...Alpizar's wife explained that she persuaded her husband to take the flight. "'He didn't want to get on the plane,'" Beshears says she told everyone in earshot. "'It's all my fault. He's sick. He's bipolar. He didn't' take his medicine...
...Beshears concluded that he feels bad for all parties involved-the Alpizar family and the air marshals. "They're in my prayers today," he says. "That family has suffered. The air marshals themselves are in my prayers because the duty they had to carry out was not one that everyone...
...blame the air marshals for what happened, he says. "When the air marshal left the plane, I didn't see a crystal ball in his hand to say what this guy's mental condition was," he says. And it's not Alpizar's fault either, he says. "I firmly believe that if that man had the mental capacity to stop and surrender his bag and cooperate, he'd be alive today...