‘Gun’ Causes Evacuation at LAX

Hundreds of people were evacuated from a Los Angeles International Airport terminal Sunday after confused security personnel detected what appeared to be a gun in a passenger’s bag, then detained the wrong passenger, airport officials said.

The weapon, spotted in an X-ray, later was found to be a gun-shaped cigarette lighter, said airport spokeswoman Nancy Castles.

The evacuation began shortly after 12:42 p.m. Airport police received a call from Southwest Airlines passenger screening agents, who said they had spotted what looked like a gun, but stopped the wrong person and allowed the individual with the suspected weapon into the terminal.

Airport police searched Terminal 1. Unable to find the young man whose bag held what appeared to have been a weapon, they decided to evacuate the facility.

Meanwhile, the man they were looking for, a 19-year-old bound for San Jose with his family, went toward his flight, unaware of any problem. His name was not released.

The terminal closure affected about 1,600 passengers, Castles estimated. The terminal remained closed for almost two hours--which meant the delay of 29 flights.

During the evacuation, airport and Los Angeles police fanned out, searching the crowd of evacuees, looking for the young man whose picture was captured by cameras. When the young man was discovered, “he was standing like everybody else, waiting to return to the terminal,” Castles said.

Horrified, the young man apologized and threw away his lighter, which was promptly picked up by airport police.

Southwest Airlines, Castles said, will be billed by airport and Los Angeles police for expenses incurred by what airport officials call an error by a security firm under contract to the airline.

It was the second such incident this month. On Aug. 6, a woman carried a gun in a bag past security agents, prompting the evacuation of 4,500 people from Terminal 1.