Marital Woes Cited in Suicide Try on Jet : Shooting: Wounded baggage handler went unnoticed in luggage area on flight to Italy. He is reported in a coma.

A Los Angeles baggage handler who apparently shot himself inside the cargo hold of an Italian airliner parked at Los Angeles International Airport--and then was transported undetected and gravely wounded to Milan--is believed to have been distraught over marital troubles, police said Monday.

The man, identified as Ramon or Roman Soriano Vasquez, was found in the luggage area of an Alitalia jet by startled ground crews in Milan, where the plane arrived Saturday after a nine-hour journey from Los Angeles.

As investigators pieced together details of the bizarre incident, a larger question remained unanswered: How was Soriano able to smuggle a gun onto the Tarmac at the Los Angeles airport’s Bradley Terminal?

Neither police nor other agencies directly responsible for security aboard aircraft could immediately say how the armed baggage handler was able to pass through controls, which were to have been tightened in the aftermath of a 1987 air crash blamed on a shooting by a former airline employee.

Police in Milan were quoted as saying that Soriano was discovered in a pool of blood, a .38-caliber pistol by his side. Doctors at Milan’s Gallarate Hospital reported Soriano to be in an irreversible coma.

Several of Soriano’s friends in Los Angeles told police on Monday that the 28-year-old man separated from his wife two weeks ago and was upset by the estrangement. He recently had bought the type of handgun found in the baggage compartment, the friends said.

“I would think that’s what we are really dealing with . . . a failed suicide,” Los Angeles Police Detective Jim Sanford said.

Soriano worked for Dynair, a company hired by Alitalia to handle luggage, according to Sanford. Dynair executives refused to answer queries from The Times.

The city Department of Airports is responsible for issuing security badges to all who work at Los Angeles International. Other security functions, such as the metal-detection screening of passengers and employees, are divided between airport police and private contractors hired by the airlines.

The ability of an armed baggage handler to reach a plane parked on the Tarmac raises anew questions about whether the screening is adequate. Security measures were supposed to have been beefed up after a disgruntled former employee smuggled a firearm aboard a Pacific Southwest Airlines flight from Los Angeles to San Francisco in December, 1987.

The former employee, David A. Burke, shot both pilots, sending the jet into a steep dive before it slammed into a hillside in San Luis Obispo County and killed all 43 people aboard. In the aftermath, federal authorities ordered airline crews and employees to pass through the same security checkpoints that passengers do, and required stricter controls on employees’ access to sensitive areas.

Ultimately, the Federal Aviation Administration is responsible for airport security. FAA officials contacted Monday could not say whether the agency was investigating the Alitalia incident.

Soriano apparently shot himself inside the jet’s cargo hold Friday night. For some reason, his nearly lifeless body was not detected by other baggage handlers and remained in the belly of the aircraft until the plane landed.

An Italian newspaper reported that he had left a suicide letter to his estranged wife, but that could not be confirmed.

Soriano is believed to be a Mexican national, and Italian authorities have asked Mexican authorities for assistance in notifying his family.