FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. -- An Army veteran who landed at the Fort Lauderdale airport with a gun in his checked luggage opened fire in the baggage claim area Friday, killing five people and wounding eight before throwing his weapon down and lying spread-eagled on the ground, authorities and witnesses said.
The gunman -- identified by authorities as 26-year-old Esteban Santiago, who served in Iraq with the National Guard but was demoted and discharged last year for unsatisfactory performance -- was immediately taken into custody. His brother said he had been receiving psychological treatment recently.
U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., first identified the suspect, saying the gunman was carrying military identification. Nelson gave no further information about the suspect.
"We don't know a motive at this point," he said. "This could well be someone who is mentally deranged, or in fact it could be someone who had a much more sinister motive that we have to worry about every day, and that is terrorism. We can't conclude that."
[INTERACTIVE: Airport map, traffic details, history of attacks]
One witness said the attacker gunned down his victims without a word and kept shooting until he ran out of ammunition for his handgun, sending panicked travelers running out of the terminal and spilling onto the tarmac, baggage in hand.
The Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport authority said on Twitter that the shooting took place in the baggage claim area in Terminal 2, which is used by Delta Air Lines and Air Canada. The baggage claim area was outside the secure area of the airport.
It is legal for airline passengers to travel with guns and ammunition as long as the firearms are in checked bags -- not carry-on bags -- and are unloaded and locked in hard-sided containers. Guns must be declared to the airline at check-in time.
Santiago arrived in Fort Lauderdale after taking off from his hometown of Anchorage, Alaska, aboard a Delta flight Thursday night, checking only one piece of luggage -- his gun, said Jesse Davis, police chief at the Anchorage airport.
"After he claimed his bag, he went into the bathroom and loaded the gun and started shooting. We don't know why," said Chip LaMarca, a Broward County commissioner who was briefed on the attack by the sheriff's office.
"People started kind of screaming and trying to get out of any door they could or hide under the chairs," witness Mark Lea told MSNBC. "He just kind of continued coming in, just randomly shooting at people, no rhyme or reason to it."
Lea said the gunman said nothing as he "went up and down the carousels of the baggage claim, shooting through luggage to get at people that were hiding." The killer had a handgun and went through about three magazines of ammunition, Lea said.
"He threw the gun down and laid spread-eagle on the ground until the officer came up to him," Lea said.
Sheriff Scott Israel said five people were killed and eight were wounded. The conditions of the injured were not disclosed. He said the gunman was arrested unharmed, with no law enforcement officers firing any shots, and was being questioned by the FBI.
The Pentagon said Santiago had gone AWOL several times during his stint with the Alaska National Guard and was demoted -- from specialist to private first class -- and given a general discharge, which is lower than an honorable discharge.
Santiago's brother, Bryan, said his brother had been receiving psychological treatment in Alaska. He said Santiago's girlfriend alerted the family to the situation in recent months.
Bryan Santiago said that he didn't know what his brother was being treated for and that they never talked about it over the telephone.
He said Esteban Santiago was born in New Jersey and moved to Puerto Rico when he was 2. He was deployed to Iraq in 2010 and spent a year there with the 130th Engineer Battalion, according to Puerto Rico National Guard spokesman Maj. Paul Dahlen. He later joined the Alaska National Guard.
Court records show that Santiago had minor brushes with the law when he lived in Alaska, including a $1,000 fine for driving without insurance and another infraction for driving with broken taillights.
Santiago has no criminal record in Florida.
Fleeing from terminals
The post-holiday shooting in the crowded airport, which began shortly before 1 p.m. Friday, set off a panic as travelers rushed out of the terminal.
As the shooting progressed, people spilled onto the tarmac, some carrying luggage. Some ran from Terminals 1 and 2, hiding behind cars or anything else they could find to shield themselves.
Former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer, who worked for President George W. Bush, tweeted that he was at the airport and "shots have been fired. Everyone is running."
Fleischer later tweeted that "all seems calm now but the police aren't letting anyone out of the airport."
The airport suspended operations as law enforcement authorities rushed to the scene and emergency medical workers treated the bleeding victims. Fort Lauderdale-bound flights already in the air were delayed or diverted, and those that had yet to take off from the airport were held on the ground.
Dr. Michael Massa, who was traveling home to Los Angeles from Europe, said he heard shots shortly after entering the terminal.
"We ran from the terminal out to the tarmac," Massa said, who added that officials then directed people toward the east side of the airport where they waited behind an airport building.
At one point, he said, officials made everyone walk single file, hands up, and patted them down.
John Schilcher told Fox News that he walked to the baggage claim area and heard the first gunshot as he picked up his bag off a carousel.
"The person next to me fell to the ground and then I started hearing other pops. And as this happened, other people started falling and you could hear it and smell it, and people on either side of me were going down and I just dropped to the ground," said Schilcher, who was there with his wife and mother-in-law. "The firing just went on and on."
"I was down on the floor. When we finally looked up, there was a policeman standing over me," he said. "That's when I assumed it was safe."
No Transportation Security Administration employees were hurt during the shooting, said spokesman Mark Howell.
Howell said all passengers in Terminal 2 were asked to exit and go through security again.
There were major traffic delays, Howell said. "We are bringing in extra resources, but they are having a hard time getting in there because of the traffic snarls."
President Barack Obama was briefed by his homeland security adviser, the White House said.
On Twitter, President-elect Donald Trump said he was "monitoring the terrible situation in Florida" and that he had spoken to Florida Gov. Rick Scott.
The Fort Lauderdale airport, which does not have its own police force and relies on the sheriff's office for law enforcement, handles about 800 flights a day and 25 million passengers a year. In 2014, the Transportation Security Administration reported making 49 gun seizures at the Fort Lauderdale airport -- tied with Tampa International Airport for the seventh-most gun seizures in the nation.
After the shooting, Miami-Dade County officials said they beefed up security at the Miami airport and the Miami port, two of the city's main travel hubs. County spokesman Michael Hernandez said "out of an abundance of caution" the county was instituting "enhanced" security at both county-owned facilities.
Information for this article was contributed by David Fischer, Freida Frisaro, Adriana Gomez-Licon and staff members of The Associated Press; by Lizette Alvarez, Neil Reisner, Erin McCann and Christine Hauser of The New York Times; and by Daniel Chang, David Smiley, Patricia Mazzei, Julie Brown, Lance Dixon, Joey Flechas, Douglas Hanks, Alex Harris, Chabeli Herrera, Nicholas Nehamas, David Ovalle, Charles Rabin, Amy Sherman and Jay Weaver of The Miami Herald.
A Section on 01/07/2017