Although airline personnel and airport employees may not have to take off their shoes or undergo the same security procedures as travelers, there are still checks in place to keep workers from carrying whatever they want onto planes — like, say, a bag full of cocaine.
Authorities say a flight attendant fled from a security screening at Los Angeles International Airport, leaving behind 69 pounds of cocaine stuffed in her luggage, the Associated Press reports.
Transportation Security Administration officers had stopped the woman at random on Friday, said a special agent with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.
She’d been sent to a secondary screening area but instead, dumped her bag, a pair of Gucci heels and bolted barefoot up an escalator, Marshall McClain, the president of the Los Angeles Airport Peace Officers Association said.
Police checked the bag she’d left behind and discovered 69 pounds of cocaine inside.
But that whole incident of a suspicious person running through the airport? That’s slightly worrying that officers were alerted about an unattended bag but not to the fact that a flight attendant was on the run, McClain noted, adding that the incident shows just why flight attendants and other airport workers need to be screened.
“With her bringing this amount of narcotics in the airport, chances are this wasn’t her first time through,” said McClain. “We’re hoping this is a wake-up call to airport management as well as federal legislators.”
Federal authorities are now searching for the flight attendant.
Officials: Airline worker flees; 70 pounds of cocaine found [Associated Press]
by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist
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