Air Marshals Knew Man Was Mentally Ill Before Opening Fire

The wife of a passenger shot dead after apparently claiming he was carrying a bomb on a plane desperately tried to tell air marshals her husband was mentally ill and had not taken his medication before they opened fire, killing him.

Passengers on board the American Airlines jetliner at Miami airport described seeing Rigoberto Alpizar, 44, run from his seat and down the aisle with his screaming wife and an undercover air marshal wearing a Hawaiian shirt in close pursuit.

"She was chasing after him," Alan Tirpak, another passenger on board, told CNN. "She was just saying her husband was sick, her husband was sick." After following him part of the way down the aisle the woman returned to her seat saying she needed to get his bags. "She just kept saying the same thing over and over, and that's when we heard the shots."

The authorities said agents opened fire when Mr Alpizar appeared to try to reach inside his backpack. Officials said he was wearing the bag on his stomach, further heightening suspicion. He was shot to death by the man in the Hawaiian shirt and a second pursuer, both undercover air marshals. James Bauer, the agent in charge of the Federal Air Marshal Service field office in Miami, said that before Mr Alpizar ran off the plane he had "uttered threatening words that included a sentence to the effect that he had a bomb".

But several passengers, including Mike Beshears, said they did not hear Mr Alpizar say anything. "He just was in a hurry and exited the plane," he said.

Ellen Sutliff, who was sitting near Mr Alpizar, told CNN he had appeared agitated even before he boarded the plane, and that his wife, Anne, kept trying to reassure him: "We just have to get through customs ... We're going to be home soon, and everything will be all right."

Asked about the apparent discrepancy in the accounts between passengers and the air marshals, an official at the Department of Homeland Security told the Guardian that every passenger on board the plane would be interviewed. "We have to wait for the investigation, but there may be situations where what they heard would depend on where they were sitting. But the air marshals have confirmed to us that they overheard him say he had a bomb in his bag," he said.

The Miami incident is the first time air marshals have opened fired since security was tightened after September 11 2001. Both men have been put on leave while an investigation is carried out, but authorities praised the agents for following their training.

On September 11 there were 33 air marshals, but now several thousand are believed to ride on passenger flights.

Friends and neighbours of Mr Alpizar struggled to understand his apparent transformation yesterday. "He was a nice guy, always smiling, always talkative," said Louis Gunther, a neighbour. "Everybody is talking about a guy I know nothing about."