Accidental firearm fire left three people injured and caused panic at the busy Atlanta International Airport, in the United States, on Saturday afternoon (20), with flights interrupted for about two hours before the Thanksgiving holiday.
The shooting took place around 1:30 pm, when an employee went to check a bag that had stopped on an X-ray for carrying a prohibited item, said the TSA (Transport Safety Administration), the government agency in charge of the matter.
“[O funcionário] advised the passenger not to touch the artifact and, upon opening the compartment that contained the prohibited item, the passenger threw himself into his bag and grabbed a firearm, which went off,” the agency said.
The gun owner fled, although “he wasn’t allowed to leave,” airport spokesman Andrew Gobeil told CNN. According to him, authorities are trying to locate the owner of the weapon. “As he was being examined, we have all his information.”
The three injured people are not at risk of dying, according to the TSA.
The fear that an active sniper had opened fire at the airport caused panic among the crowd, who ran from the terminal to the runway. “More and more people started running, [houve] screams,” said traveler Erika Zeidler.
Many people crouched when they heard a loud detonation and others ran, dropping suitcases in their path, trying to escape the place, videos posted on social networks show. It was possible to hear people shouting “Down!” while others crawled on the ground.
On Twitter, the airport said there was “no danger to passengers or staff” as there was no sniper opening fire and police were on the scene.
Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport was the busiest airport in the world in 2021, according to the Official Airline Guide (OAG).
A record number of firearms were seized at US airport checkpoints in just the first nine months of 2021, according to the TSA. Across the country, agency officials prevented 4,495 passengers from carrying weapons on flights, surpassing the 4,432 artifacts captured throughout 2019. In Atlanta alone, 450 weapons were detected at checkpoints this year.
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