U.S. investigators search for motive after fatal Florida airport shooting

While airport security has undergone massive upgrades in the wake of the 9/11 terror attacks, CTV’s public safety analyst Chris Lewis says those extra measures are primarily aimed at individuals boarding flights, not departing passengers or people waiting in common areas.

These duties are critical, but the shooting in a baggage claim area at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport and a shooting incident at Los Angeles International Airport in 2013 that left a TSA officer dead and others injured show the need for a broader approach, Cohen said.

President-elect Donald Trump, who called for banning Muslims from entering the United States after San Bernardino, said in a tweet on Friday, “Monitoring the bad situation in Florida”.

“He was a lone shooter and we have no evidence at this time that he was acting with anyone else”, she said.

Federal Bureau of Investigation agent George Piro said: “We’re looking at every angle, including the terrorism angle”.

Santiago arrived at the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport on Friday afternoon, having traveled on a Delta flight from Anchorage, with a layover in Minneapolis. Santiago went to the FBI’s Anchorage division office, leaving his newborn son in his vehicle, and told agents the Central Intelligence Agency was forcing him to watch ISIS videos, the Miami Herald reported.

Multiple media outlets have cited unnamed law enforcement sources as saying the gunman is 26-year-old Esteban Santiago, believed to be a former U.S. Army soldier from New Jersey, but police have not yet confirmed these reports. Others hid in bathroom stalls or crouched behind cars or anything else they could find as police and paramedics rushed in Friday to help the wounded and establish whether there were any other gunmen.

Investigators say Santiago fired ten to fifteen rounds of ammunition from his handgun, shooting all the rounds in one magazine, then reloading and emptying the second.

Santiago, who served as a combat engineer in the National Guard in Puerto Rico and Alaska, was discharged from service past year for unsatisfactory performance.

Santiago had served in the National Guard and spent a year in Iraq in 2010.

UPDATE 2:35 P.M. EST: There are reports of shots fired in a parking garage at Ft. “He came out shooting people in baggage claim”. “Passengers do have guns in their luggage”. Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe spoke out about the tragedy following the shooting: “This is just heart wrenching”, he told 10 On Your Side. “I’m going to have to go”.

The Broward Sheriff’s Office said they received a call about the shooting around 12:55 p.m.

Flying with firearms is routine and legal in the United States as long as the guns are kept in a locked, hard-sided container as checked baggage only. “He just kind of continued coming in, just randomly shooting at people, no rhyme or reason to it”.