Fort Lauderdale shooting: possible terror motive still under investigation

FBI agent in charge of Miami field office says nothing has been ruled out after ‘hours-long’ interview with suspect Esteban Santiago

Passengers who were at Fort Lauderdale international airport during Friday’s shooting were rounded up and not allowed to leave until police could confirm they had nothing to do with the shooting. Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

Richard Luscombe in Fort Lauderdale-Saturday 7 January 2017

Terrorism was still being considered as a possible motive for the deadly shooting attack at Fort Lauderdale airport, the FBI said on Saturday, as investigators continued to delve into the past of the Iraq war veteran accused of killing five and wounding six others.

Esteban Santiago, 26, was held at the Broward County jail on Saturday with federal charges from the US attorney’s office expected that afternoon, said George Piro, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Miami field office.

At a Saturday morning press briefing, Piro said that Santiago, a former National Guardsman who had received extensive psychological treatment after returning from a 2011 tour of duty in Iraq, “was cooperative” during an hours-long interview . But Piro maintained that it was too early to establish the motive for the shooting.

“The indications are he came here to carry out this horrific attack. We have not identified any triggers that would have caused this attack but it’s very early in the investigation,” Piro said.

“We continue to look at all angles and motives and at this point we are continuing to look at the terrorism angle. We have not ruled anything out.”

At the same briefing, Scott Israel, the Broward County sheriff, downgraded the number of wounded during Friday’s attack, from eight to six.

Of the gunshot victims, he said, three were in “good” condition and three remained in intensive care.

Santiago’s mental issues would continue to be a focal point of the investigation, which was being carried out jointly by the FBI and detectives from the Broward sheriff’s office (BSO), Piro said.

Santiago, who has a girlfriend and four-month old baby in Alaska, flew to Fort Lauderdale from Anchorage via Minneapolis, and appeared to have acted alone. Piro said the suspect used a legally held 9mm semiautomatic handgun, which had been checked on to the flight in accordance with security requirements.

Suspect in Fort Lauderdale shooting known to US authorities

At an earlier briefing, Piro said Santiago, who was discharged from Alaska national guard for “unsatisfactory service” in August, had turned up at unexpectedly at the FBI’s office in Anchorage in November, complaining that voices in his head were telling him to follow the terror group Isis.

His brother, Bryan Santiago, told the Associated Press on Saturday: “The FBI failed there ... we’re not talking about someone who emerged from anonymity to do something like this.

“The federal government already knew about this for months, they had been evaluating him for a while, but they didn’t do anything.”

Santiago’s aunt, Maria Ruiz Rivera, was one of a number of family members who told reporters her nephew had “changed” and became increasingly unstable after returning from Iraq. “He had visions all the time,” she said in an interview from her home in Union City, New Jersey. “His mind was not right. He seemed normal at times but other times he seemed lost.”

Piro said investigators had spoken to all of Santiago’s family members identified so far, and had reviewed airport security footage and conducted about 175 witness interviews “in numerous locations not only in South Florida”.

“We’re looking not only at all the places he has resided but also the places he has travelled,” he said.

Meanwhile, several witnesses spoke of escaping the attack, including one man who said his life was saved by a laptop in his backpack.

Steve Frappier, from Atlanta, Georgia, said he was trying to shelter on the floor of the baggage hall “like a tortoise with the backpack on me” when he felt something hit him. “The bullet entered my backpack [and] hit my laptop,” he told CNN.

“It hit through the open backpack, exited, ran through the laptop and the casing and landed in an interior pocket.” He showed photographs of his shattered laptop and said the FBI had found the bullet in a pocket when they examined it.

A woman from Weston, Florida, who asked not to be named, said the shooter walked around the baggage carousel while he was firing. “He was just walking with his arms straight out, stone-faced,” she said. A female passenger standing next to her, she said, was shot in the head and killed.

Another witness, Mark Lea, from Minnesota, spoke of helping those who had been shot, including a woman with a shoulder wound who was looking for her husband.

“I saw that she had a through-and-through on the right shoulder, and she said: ‘Where’s my husband, where’s my husband?’” Lea told KETV. “I asked her to describe him and I looked right over there and saw a white-haired guy in a blue shirt. He was not moving, not breathing.”

Authorities have yet to formally identify any of the victims or survivors. Family members named an elderly couple from Council Bluffs, Iowa, as victims of the shooting, saying the husband, Michael Oehme, 57, had died and the wife, Kari, 52, was recovering in hospital with a gunshot wound to her shoulder.

Media reports also identified a 62-year-old grandfather from Virginia and a great-grandmother from Georgia, who was in Fort Lauderdale for a cruise to celebrate her husband’s 90th birthday, among the dead.

Rick Scott, the Florida governor, said at an early morning briefing Saturday that he had visited some of the victims of “an absolutely horrific day” at Broward Health medical center.

“We all want answers. Individuals have been killed and some are fighting for their lives,” he said. “I’m a dad and I’m a granddad. I just can’t imagine this happening to my family or any other family.”

Scott promised that the killer would be held responsible “to the fullest extent of the law”, and tried to reassure tourists that Florida was safe.

“We love our tourists and we’ll do everything we can to encourage them to come here,” he said, claiming that crime in the state was at a 45-year low.

The baggage hall in Terminal 2 remained closed on Saturday, although all other areas of the airport reopened and flights resumed after almost 16 hours shut down. Airport authorities said they were trying to reunite 20,000 bags and personal items, abandoned during the chaos on Friday, with their owners.

The last of thousands of passengers, stranded for hours on planes or the tarmac, and many forced to spend the night at a nearby cruise terminal, were evacuated from the airport by early Saturday.

The Associated Press contributed reporting