Woman With Gun in Bag Seized at Airport

A Lake Elsinore woman who was arrested when a loaded gun was detected in her carry-on bag as she prepared to board a plane in San Francisco said Tuesday that she carried the pistol through security at Ontario International Airport on the first day of the Federal Aviation Administration’s newly bolstered security program.

The claim made by Ruth Persley, a 59-year-old administrative assistant at the University of California, Riverside, was an embarrassment to the FAA. On Monday, the agency initiated a new program of requiring all airport and airline workers to join passengers in walking through metal detectors and submitting their bags to X-ray screenings before boarding planes.

On Tuesday, police at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport found a small gun on American Airlines passenger Charles Piel, 26, of Carlsbad after he disembarked a flight from Orange County’s John Wayne Airport.

“One of the flight attendants discovered the man smoking marijuana and informed the captain,” who had police meet the plane, FAA spokesman Mort Edelstein said.

The gun, called a penchant clip pen gun, resembles a standard writing pen but contains one .22-caliber bullet, Edelstein said. Preliminary charges filed against Piel include felony possession of marijuana and unlawful possession of a weapon, he said.

The FAA’s new policy was initiated in response to the Dec. 7 crash of a PSA jet believed caused by David A. Burke, an ex-airline employee who boarded the plane with a gun at Los Angeles International Airport’s Terminal 1. Burke is believed to have shot the pilot and co-pilot, causing the crash that killed himself and all 42 other people aboard.

Nationwide tests by the FAA, using mock weapons, have found that security personnel at checkpoints fail to detect 20% of weapons placed in carry-on baggage.

Persley was arrested Monday afternoon for investigation of carrying a concealed weapon and carrying a loaded weapon in a public place. She was later released on her own recognizance.

Persley reportedly told San Francisco International Airport police the gun belonged to her daughter. Authorities said she told them that she inadvertently carried it through the security checkpoint at Ontario on Monday morning when she boarded a PSA flight to San Francisco for a meeting in Berkeley. At the end of the day Persley prepared to board her return flight and “when the bag went through the X-ray machine, the person working security noted the outline of a gun,” San Francisco Police Sgt. Gary O’Donnell said.

Persley declined to comment Tuesday beyond confirming that she had told police: “Oh, no! I forgot that was in there.”

An FAA spokeswoman said the agency is investigating whether to impose a $1,000 civil penalty against Persley, as well as American Airlines, which has responsibility for contracting for security in the Ontario terminal that PSA uses.

An American Airlines spokesman said it was impossible to be sure that Persley had the gun in her baggage when she went through security at Ontario.

The security company employed by American is the same company employed at Los Angeles International’s LAX’s Terminal 1, Allied Aviation Service. A receptionist at Allied said no one was available to comment.

Times staff writer Mariann Hansen in Lake Elsinore also contributed to this story.