Search for Gun Forces Major Delays at Airport

Thousands of travelers were delayed for hours Thursday when officials at Los Angeles International Airport closed and evacuated one of the facility’s busiest terminals after a semiautomatic handgun turned up in a woman’s carry-on baggage.

Security personnel detected the weapon about 11:30 a.m. during a routine X-ray inspection in Terminal 1. By the time the agent looked up, the woman and the bag were gone, said airport spokeswoman Nancy Castles.

Airport police could not find the woman, later identified as 45-year-old Long Beach resident Joy Yoshida, in the crowded building and “had to make the decision to evacuate the terminal,” Castles said. The terminal serves travelers flying on Southwest, USAir and AmericaWest airlines.

Travelers, directed at one point by airport officials using bullhorns, evacuated the terminal en masse. Passengers on three aircraft awaiting takeoff were forced to deplane and leave the terminal as airport police swept the building and the evacuated planes, looking for the gun.

As it turned out, Yoshida had gone home, taking the gun with her, Castles said. Yoshida later told authorities that she had been carrying the bag to a passenger she had dropped off at the terminal’s entrance moments earlier. Yoshida told police she did not know there was a gun in the bag until she reached the passenger inside the terminal. That passenger, Yoshida told police, was surprised the bag had made it through security, and the two agreed that Yoshida should take the weapon home.

Airport authorities noted that surveillance videos seemed to support Yoshida’s claim that she did not know a gun was in the bag.

“In the tape, the woman picks up the two bags and just walks away,” Castles said. Castles emphasized that the tape did not show Yoshida hurrying away or attempting to elude security.

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Yoshida said that after returning home with the gun, she received a call from the woman she had dropped off, a passenger who--like thousands of others that day--had had her flight delayed. Yoshida returned to the airport, and immediately was taken into custody by airport police, who recognized her from her image captured earlier by a surveillance camera.

Yoshida was booked on suspicion of carrying a concealed weapon and was later released on her own recognizance.

All told, about 3,500 passengers were evacuated for nearly two hours, Castles said. Twenty flights had been scheduled to leave during that time. Fifteen arriving flights scheduled to drop off passengers at Terminal 1 were directed instead to remote areas of the airport, where passengers waited until officials reopened the terminal.

The terminal was reopened at 1:45 p.m., but that didn’t end the wait for departing passengers. Many of them had to stand in massive lines before passing through airport security and then were delayed again because flights had been rescheduled late into the afternoon.