Authorities Search for Motive in Machete-Wielding New Orleans Airport Attack
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Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images(NEW ORLEANS) — Authorities continue to search for a motive in the bizarre attack on TSA agents by a man with machete and a can of wasp spray at the New Orleans international airport.
The suspect, Richard White, 62, died at an area hospital on Saturday after he underwent surgery for gunshot wounds, according to the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office.
White was a Jehovah’s Witness, and “refused” certain types of medical care, Jefferson Parish Sheriff Newell Normand said at a press conference Saturday. He added that there was also a “mental illness component.”
Authorities searched a bag the suspect dropped in the security area and found several Molotov cocktails and a search of his abandoned car revealed smoke bombs and chemical tanks, Normand said.
What the suspect intended to do with the tanks and what triggered the attack remained unknown, the sheriff said.
White entered the TSA pre-line shortly before 8 p.m. Friday, and was challenged by an agent who was checking boarding passes to be scanned, Normand said. He sprayed the agent in the face with the insecticide and continued past the checkpoint, he said.
Two more TSA agents then confronted White, according to police. He sprayed one male agent with the wasp spray before pulling a machete from his waistband and swinging it at him and a female agent.
“The male TSA officer grabbed a piece of luggage in order to defend himself,” Normand said.
White chased the male agent through a metal detector before he was shot three times — once in the chest, once in the leg, and once in the face — by Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Lt. Heather Sylve, police said.
A bullet from Sylve’s gun also hit the female TSA agent who was running from White. She suffered a non life-threatening injury, police said.
Normand said it did not appear that White was trying to get on a plane. A statement from the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office said his criminal history consisted of a few minor arrests.
Jeh Johnson, secretary of Homeland Security, called the attack a “senseless act of violence,” in a statement released Saturday.
Johnson said this incident is a “reminder of the variety of threats we face and the important work that the men and women of the Transportation Security Administration do every day to keep millions of passengers traveling through our airports safe.”
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