Pandorra wrote:
Tell me again why he was even in a position to reach into his carry-on luggage once he announced the bomb?
There's a reason it's called "carry-on luggage"...
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If anything was done wrong here, It was that he was allowed anywhere near the bag until they had opened it and taken every last scrap out to be sure there was no danger.
Read the story. It's not that they discovered he had a bomb in his luggage and then allowed him to go get it. He walked *off* a plane. Luggage in hand. He traveled through security. Luggage in hand. As he was moving into the tunnel to get onto another plane, he started wigging out and claimed that he had a bomb in his luggage.
The sky marshals had no clue that there was anything wrong until he did that. Thus, there's no way they could have stopped him from having his luggage. That's why he had it on him. Now. One could argue that since he'd carried that luggage off one plane and onto another, that he must have gone through security a couple times, and it was unlikely that he *actually* had a bomb in his luggage, but that's not a call that an individual sky marshal can or should make. At the time, they didn't know where he'd come from or how he got there. All they know is that there's a guy yelling that he's got a bomb in his luggage. They have to assume he's being truthful and act on that information. When he refused to put down the bag, they had to assume that he was in possession of an explosive device and would use it.
How exactly do you think they should have handled it? Do you really expect them to grapple with him? I'm sorry. But if I'm going off the assumption that the guy standing there has a
bomb, the last thing I'm going to do is try to get close to him. I'm going to demand that he put it down. And if he doesn't, I'm going to shoot him. It's really that simple. They had him in one of those tunnel/bridge boarding thingies, right? That's about the best place to take him out since there's little chance of hitting anyone else, and if an explosion does occur, it's likely to just take out the boarding tunnel, and not part of a terminal. IMO, they did exactly what they should have done.