Panic at the Orlando airport when a man alarms passengers at security checkpoint
An attempted security breach at the Orlando International Airport Saturday afternoon led to reports of an active shooter.
The false reports sparked some panic at the airport and led to the closing of some security checkpoints at the MCO airport for the second time in two weeks.
“In Orlando airport security line, we see a mass of people start to run — word of a gun,” Sylvia Larsen tweeted. She spoke of people hiding and crouching by planters and pillars. “TSA can’t tell us what’s happening, but word comes they’ve tackled him.”
Zachary Jaydon tweeted from the scene, saying that passengers were hiding on trams and in bathrooms well after the man, who was near the TSA screening area, “began acting extremely erratically.” He wrote that “two louds pops were heard” and that led people to stampede from the checkpoint.
After about two hours, Orlando police sent out a tweet alerting the public that “all reports on an active shooter or a subject with a gun are FALSE. [The] incident is contained and subject has been arrested.”
By 2:15 p.m. the west checkpoint that ushers passengers through gates one to 59 was fully operational.
The chaos began around noon, when a man reached into his pocket while trying to enter the area without being checked first by Transportation Security Administration agents, according to Orlando police. Nearby passengers shouted that the man had a gun, which caused panic in the screening area.
Orlando police identified the man as Ryan Scott Mills, 37, the Orlando Sentinel reported.
“Delays continue as the TSA works to safely and efficiently screen passengers,”an airport official said nearly two hours later.
“There is no current threat to the Orlando International Airport,” police said. “As always, we ask for your patience with @MCO and @TSA personnel as they work to resume normal airport operations.
Some passengers praised their airlines for keeping passengers — including a group of kids on a Frontiers flight — calm.
“The crew on Frontier Flight 154 from Des Moines to Orlando did a fabulous job entertaining a lot of kids as we sat on the tarmac due to a security incident at the Orlando airport!” read a tweet from Tess Howard.
The airport is urging that passenger with flights scheduled for the afternoon check with the airline for flight status updates.
Mills was taken into custody under a Baker Act order, the Orlando Sentinel reported. Charges, which could include disorderly conduct and resisting an officer without violence are pending.
This is actually the third incident in February to send police racing to Orlando International.
Four days after the TSA agent’s suicide at MCO, on Feb. 6, an Orlando woman, Angela McNaughton, was arrested after Orlando police say she got into a scuffle with TSA agents and the police when she tried to push her way through an employee entrance without being screened. Police say they found a knife in her possession after she hit an officer and threw his radio to the ground, the Associated Press reported.
This story was originally published February 16, 2019 at 2:52 PM.
