"Fretful Passenger, Turmoil on Jet and Fatal Shots"

Friday, December 9, 2005

Fretful Passenger, Turmoil on Jet and Fatal Shots 
By ABBY GOODNOUGH
The New York (NY) Times


MIAMI, - Lingering near his departure gate at Miami International Airport on
Wednesday, Rigoberto Alpizar appeared flustered and loath to make the last,
brief leg of his long journey home. 

"He was standing up against the wall with his wife," said Alan Tirpak, a
fellow passenger on American Airlines Flight 924 to Orlando, who spotted Mr.
Alpizar next to the passageway leading to their plane around 2 p.m. "He
looked agitated - had a very nervous, agitated look to him. As I walked past
them, his wife told him, 'Let's let these people get on first. It will be
O.K.' " 

Minutes later, after the couple had found their seats at the back of the
aircraft and Mr. Tirpak had settled into his seat near first class, Mr.
Alpizar ran through the aisle toward the front of the plane, almost knocking
over a flight attendant, "trying desperately" to get off with his wife at
his heels, recalled another passenger, Natalia Cayon. 

When he ignored calls from two federal marshals to stop, he was gunned down
in the passageway. 

The marshals said Mr. Alpizar had said he had a bomb.

Relatives said the couple had been returning from a stressful vacation. Mr.
Alpizar's wife, Anne Buechner, had been robbed in Peru, losing her wallet,
passport, laptop computer and cellphone, said her sister-in-law, Kelley
Buechner of Milwaukee.

"That really upset Rigo," Ms. Buechner said in an interview at her home,
using the family's nickname for Mr. Alpizar, a Costa Rica native who became
an American citizen a few years ago. "Anne was robbed in Peru, and it was
very unsettling to them both." 

Mr. Tirpak, flying home from a business trip, said that as the couple waited
to board Mr. Alpizar had begun singing the refrain from the old spiritual,
"Let My People Go." 

The Miami-Dade Police Department, which is investigating whether the
shooting was justified, said it had interviewed more than 100 passengers and
crew members from Flight 924 and that preliminary evidence suggested Mr.
Alpizar had repeatedly refused to surrender. The White House, meanwhile,
defended the actions of the air marshals.

"I don't think anyone wants to see it come to a situation like this," said
Scott McClellan, the White House spokesman. "But these marshals appear to
have acted in a way that's consistent with the extensive training that they
have received. And we'll see what the investigation shows, and lessons
learned from that will be applied to future training and protocol."

Chief Willie Marshall, who leads the Miami-Dade criminal investigations
unit, said Mr. Alpizar had run off the plane and, while on the passageway,
reached into a bag that was "strapped to his chest." That was when both air
marshals opened fire with multiple shots, he said. 

Chief Marshall said that homicide detectives had interviewed Ms. Buechner
throughout the night and that she had told them her husband had received a
diagnosis of bipolar disorder roughly a decade ago. "She provided us some
very valuable information and insight about what was going on with her
husband," he said. "She told us he had not taken his medication recently."

Though Chief Marshall said the couple had been on a vacation, a neighbor
described it as a missionary trip and said both were frequent churchgoers. 

Both marshals aboard Flight 924 were hired in 2002, said David M. Adams, a
spokesman for the Federal Air Marshal Service. One was a four-year veteran
of the Border Patrol and spoke fluent Spanish, he said, and the other had
worked for two years as a customs inspector.

Mr. Adams said he did not know what language the air marshals had used to
address Mr. Alpizar. But another marshal, who spoke on the condition of
anonymity because air marshals have been threatened with dismissal for
speaking to the news media, said he understood that instructions had been
given in both Spanish and English.

One marshal said that air marshals are typically the first to board planes,
even before the disabled and travelers with young children, and that
Wednesday's incident had occurred before the plane door was closed. He
theorized that the marshals had probably not had a chance to observe Mr.
Alpizar in the boarding lounge. 

Chief Marshall would not reveal the specifics of his agency's interviews
with people who were on the aircraft, including whether any had said they
heard Mr. Alpizar threaten that he had a bomb. But Mark Raynor, an American
Airlines pilot and local union official in Miami, said an account he heard
from the plane's captain had supported law enforcement accounts of the
shooting. 

Mr. Raynor said the captain had been outside the cockpit at the time of the
shooting and witnessed it, but the first officer had been inside the cockpit
and had seen nothing. 

Chief Marshall said detectives were waiting to interview the two air
marshals and hoped to do so on Thursday. The marshals were placed on paid
leave on Thursday, pending the outcome of an internal investigation,
officials said.

Ms. Buechner returned Thursday to the white ranch home she had shared with
her husband of 18 years in Maitland, outside Orlando. Relatives who had
flown to Miami drove her the roughly four hours home after she had finished
talking to detectives, Chief Marshall said.

Ms. Buechner did not speak to reporters who had gathered outside the home on
a bleak, rainy day, but her brother, Steven Buechner of Milwaukee, and her
sister, Jeanne Jentsch, of Sheboygan, Wis., emerged to read a short
statement and ask the news media to leave the family alone. 

"Rigo Alpizar was a loving, gentle and caring husband, uncle, brother, son
and friend," Ms. Buechner said. "He was born in Costa Rica and became a
proud American citizen several years ago. He will be sorely missed by all
who knew him." 

Kelley Buechner was more forthcoming as she talked to a reporter while
drinking coffee in her Milwaukee living room, the television news droning in
the background.

She said Mr. Alpizar had learned English after moving to Florida from Costa
Rica. She described him as a joyous, playful man who enjoyed working in his
garden and taking his niece to Disney World and the beach when she visited
every summer.

"It's not the Rigo we knew," she said. "This person who you are seeing is
not our Rigo."

Until now, Kelley Buechner said, she had never heard that her brother-in-law
was bipolar, only that he had had "a chemical imbalance" for which he took
vitamins. She said she had never known Mr. Alpizar to stop taking his
medication. 

If he was bipolar, she said, it was fitting of Anne Buechner not to discuss
it with family. "She's the type who doesn't want to burden people with her
problems," Kelley Buechner said.

Her daughter, Ciara, 11, described Mr. Alpizar as a gentle uncle whom she
could not imagine hurting anyone. "If I caught lizards and accidentally
killed one, he would almost be kind of sad," Ciara said of her annual visits
to Florida. "He would say, 'What if that happened to you?'"

Attached Photo:

Rigoberto Alpizar with his nephew Austin, in 2000.

alpizar2.jpg