Security Tightened at LAX After Motorist Evades Runway Gate

Los Angeles airport officials on Monday announced new security measures--including the immediate installation of concrete barriers--at the perimeter of Los Angeles International, one day after a motorist managed to enter a taxiway and drive underneath the wing of a departing jetliner.

The decision to tighten security at five airfield entrances to LAX came as three employees at the airport claimed, in separate interviews, that the driver’s Sunday morning breach of LAX security lasted far longer--and could have been much more serious--than officials reported.

“They totally downplayed the whole thing,” said Scott Langford, who has worked as a ramp service employee at LAX since 1979. “He could have gotten onto a runway; he easily could have gotten . . . in the path of a landing aircraft.”

Langford and two other employees said the man arrested by airport police was traveling along a taxiway for at least four minutes after he skirted a security gate at 96th Street. “He was there a good three to four minutes before I even saw a cop,” said Ray Durkee, 31, another ramp service worker.

Airport officials have maintained that the motorist, identified as Kang Min Wang, 25, was arrested two minutes after he entered the taxiway.

Langford, Durkee and another ramp employee, Orlando Espinoza, 29, also said the motorist drove much farther than officials indicated Sunday. After Wang’s arrest, airport police said he had driven only about 300 yards on a taxiway, but they revised that estimate Monday to .6 miles--more than 3,000 feet--after being told about the reports by the employees.

“My whole point is that he got so far back in there, he was driving around [moving] aircraft,” Langford said.

And while airport officials said they did not know how fast the driver was traveling in the restricted taxiway, the three employees estimated his speed at 60 to 80 mph. “After we saw him speed away, I thought, ‘Man, I hope this guy is not carrying a bomb,’ ” said Espinoza.

Airport spokeswoman Nancy Suey Castles disputed the employees’ contention that officials downplayed the seriousness of the incident.

“Any incursion onto the airfield is considered a serious incident,” she said, “and . . . the installation of the barriers, which were up by noon, is indicative of that.”

On Monday, Castles said, officials had installed a concrete barrier at the 96th Street access gate. The other gates would soon receive the same security measure, she said.

Castles added that officials also had instituted a new policy preventing more than one vehicle from entering or exiting the access gates at a time.

Other undisclosed security measures also were to be implemented immediately, she said.

Wang, whose motive for driving onto the airport remains unknown, was taken to Harbor-UCLA Medical Center for observation after his arrest.