Lax False Alarm - About 20 passengers at the Los Angeles International Airport had to flee to the tarmac after a mistaken public announcement warned that a gun man was on the loose in the building.
The incident happened on Monday and the mistaken announcement, which caused panic was issued from Terminal 2, where the airport's public address system is located.
LAX police reports indicate that the airport false alarm is connected a separate incident where officials were chasing an unarmed driver just outside Terminal 2.
LAX Police Sgt. Belinda Joseph said around 9 a.m., officials responded to an emergency of a man trying to kill himself off the airport's property.
After a short car chase, the unidentified man was arrested outside Terminal 2, and the Los Angeles fire department transported him to a local hospital for an undisclosed condition.
"A citizen walking by the parking area of Japan Airlines Cargo observed a vehicle with a garden hose coming out of the exhaust pipe leading to the rear passenger window. The citizen then notified airport dispatch. When airport police arrived on scene, the victim was seen writing what appeared to a suicide note," a police statement read.
It is not clear how the information that a man with a gun was on the loose got to the airport's public address system. Authorities are yet to identify who made the false announcement.
According to St. Karla Ortiz, the panicked passengers who exited the airport through the emergency doors near the gates and reached the airfield, were "under observation the whole time."
Officials got the whole situation under control with 15 minutes after the false alarm went off.
In recent times, there have been shooting at the airport. In November 2013m a gunman killed a screening agent and injured two other people with a high-power rifle.
And in July 2002, two people were killed and four injured when a gun man opened fire at a ticketing center of an Israeli airline.
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