This is horrifying:

At least one passenger aboard American Airlines Flight 924 maintains the federal air marshals were a little too quick on the draw when they shot and killed Rigoberto Alpizar as he frantically attempted to run off the airplane shortly before take-off.

"I don't think they needed to use deadly force with the guy," says John McAlhany, a 44-year-old construction worker from Sebastian, Fla. "He was getting off the plane." McAlhany also maintains that Alpizar never mentioned having a bomb.

"I never heard the word 'bomb' on the plane," McAlhany told TIME in a telephone interview. "I never heard the word bomb until the FBI asked me did you hear the word bomb. That is ridiculous." Even the authorities didn't come out and say bomb, McAlhany says. "They asked, 'Did you hear anything about the b-word?'" he says. "That's what they called it."

When the incident began McAlhany was in seat 24C, in the middle of the plane. "[Alpizar] was in the back," McAlhany says, "a few seats from the back bathroom. He sat down." Then, McAlhany says, "I heard an argument with his wife. He was saying 'I have to get off the plane.' She said, 'Calm down.'"

Alpizar took off running down the aisle, with his wife close behind him. "She was running behind him saying, 'He's sick. He's sick. He's ill. He's got a disorder," McAlhany recalls. "I don't know if she said bipolar disorder [as one witness has alleged]. She was trying to explain to the marshals that he was ill. He just wanted to get off the plane."

McAlhany described Alpizar as carrying a big backpack and wearing a fanny pack in front. He says it would have been impossible for Alpizar to lie flat on the floor of the plane, as marshals ordered him to do, with the fanny pack on. "You can't get on the ground with a fanny pack," he says. "You have to move it to the side."

By the time Alpizar made it to the front of the airplane, the crew had ordered the rest of the passengers to get down between the seats. "I didn't see him get shot," he says. "They kept telling me to get down. I heard about five shots."

McAlhany says he tried to see what was happening just in case he needed to take evasive action. "I wanted to make sure if anything was coming toward me and they were killing passengers I would have a chance to break somebody's neck," he says. "I was looking through the seats because I wanted to see what was coming.

"I was on the phone with my brother. Somebody came down the aisle and put a shotgun to the back of my head and said put your hands on the seat in front of you. I got my cell phone karate chopped out of my hand. Then I realized it was an official."

In the ensuing events, many of the passengers began crying in fear, he recalls. "They were pointing the guns directly at us instead of pointing them to the ground," he says "One little girl was crying. There was a lady crying all the way to the hotel." ...

Guess what. Pit bulls like this don't make the passengers safer -- although pointing guns at little kids is a nice touch. They kill passengers, just like pit bulls, meant for protection, end up killing their own families' kids. Reinforced cockpit doors protect passengers. It's increasingly alarming that not a single passenger has been found by the media who heard the passenger trying to get off the plane say anything about a bomb. Remember the innocent Brazilian man killed by police in the London subway a few months ago, who police concocted a story about acting threatening? Turned out to be a total sham? (The British police ultimately apologized). It seems increasingly likely this is the same thing.

I should say this scenario -- that the authorities made up or imagined the story about him saying he had a bomb -- never occurred to me when I was writing this morning that there had to be a better way for air marshalls to deal with a mentally ill person already off the plane than killing him. And then a reader wrote in suggesting that it was strange not a single passenger interviewed by the media had heard anything about him claiming to have a bomb. Hours and several media reports later, that seems to be even more apparent.

Update: As I just wrote a reader who strongly disagrees with me on this issue (most every other reader who has written in, including a former commercial pilot, have expressed horror as well), "Reading all of the accounts, it sounds like the guy was having ... a panic attack. And the plane was parked at the gate. And he was trying to get off. And the stewardesses were inconvenienced. And the air marshalls were alerted. And they killed him.
I don't think this is a good reason to kill someone. I don't think this is a good reason for air marshalls to put guns at the heads of other passengers. If that makes you feel safer, fine for you, but I would feel distinctly unsafe -- by how the air marshalls handled this."

Posted by Laura at December 9, 2005 12:31 AM