March 24--The flight attendant accused of trying to smuggle 70 pounds of cocaine through Los Angeles International Airport hopped a flight across the country the day after she abandoned the drugs and sprinted away from a security checkpoint, investigators said Thursday.
Marsha Gay Reynolds, 31, of Queens, N.Y., flew back to New York City from LAX less than 24 hours after she dropped a suitcase loaded with cocaine and ran away from a Transportation Safety Administration checkpoint inside Terminal 4, according to Laura Eimiller, a spokeswoman for the FBI in Los Angeles.
Reynolds, who worked for JetBlue airlines, managed to escape from the terminal and flew back to New York the next day, Eimiller said. She may have worked as an attendant on the flight she took back to New York, according to a law enforcement source who previously spoke to the Los Angeles Times on condition of anonymity because the individual was not authorized to discuss the case.
Drug Enforcement Administration agents took Reynolds into custody Wednesday at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City.
Reynolds' second flight may not have tripped any alarms because the TSA had trouble identifying her as the woman who abandoned the cocaine inside LAX on March 18, according to Marshall McClain, president of the Los Angeles Airport Peace Officers Assn.
Airport and airline staff are not subject to routine security screenings at LAX. But Reynolds was randomly selected for an additional screening after she scanned her identification badge at a TSA checkpoint.
TSA officers checked Reynolds' identification Friday night when she scanned her badge, but were unable to retrieve that information after she abandoned her luggage and ran.
"They check your ID on the reader to make sure that it's valid, they look at you to make sure what we're looking at in the system is you, and then the next 100 folks come through. So it's stored, but there's no way for whoever is working that reader to print it out, or back it up," McClain said. "There was a pretty big delay. Friday night, all law enforcement knew is that it was a flight attendant."
The TSA referred all questions to the DEA, which in turn referred a reporter to the FBI. Both agencies are investigating Reynolds' case.
Ultimately it was federal investigators, not the TSA, who confirmed Reynolds' identity, according to LAX Police Chief Pat Gannon.
McClain said Reynolds would have easily been able to shepherd the cocaine through security had she not been selected for a random screening. LAX is far from the only airport in the nation that allows airline staff to breeze through security, but McClain described the streamlined screening process as a major "security loophole."
"The fact that flight attendants can be in their plain clothes, not even actually working, and have the ability to bypass screening with their luggage, that's a serious problem," he said. "That's a luxury I don't believe we can afford right now."
Gannon said the TSA called airport police to notify them of an unattended bag, but they did not mention the fact that Reynolds had run from the area.
"We get these calls regularly, and obviously, we didn't know the extent of it until we got there," he said.
Reynolds appeared in federal court in Brooklyn, N.Y., on Thursday afternoon to answer felony drug charges. A judge ordered her held in lieu of $500,000 bail, which was immediately posted by her parents and a local church pastor, according to a spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney's office in Brooklyn.
The judge stayed her release until Friday, allowing federal prosecutors time to consider an appeal to the decision.
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