FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. _ Calls to 911 released Tuesday portray nervous passengers and workers hiding at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, in the aftermath of the mass shooting that left five dead and six wounded.
"There's something going on at the airport," said one caller from Terminal 2, where the shooting took place. "The alarms are going off, and somebody screamed 'He had a gun.'"
Another caller said, "We're at the Fort Lauderdale airport, everyone is running and we don't know what's going on. They're taking us all out of the airport ... We are hiding in the back of the kitchen at one of the restaurants."
A third caller said she was working at the airport in Terminal 2 and baffled by the chaos going on. "Everyone is running from the TSA location, I'm in Terminal 2 at the Delta Sky Club. We're locked in here, we don't know what's going on outside."
Esteban Santiago, 26, is accused of carrying out the Jan. 6 attack. He pleaded not guilty Monday to 22 federal charges and is being held at the Federal Detention Center in downtown Miami.
The sheriff's office released the 911 recordings at the insistence of the Sun-Sentinel and its attorneys. The calls released Tuesday did not include any from direct witnesses to the shooting.
A 911 dispatcher advised one group of Delta crew members locked in a briefing room to stay there.
"They're doing a search of the airport right now," she said. "There's an active search going on, OK? There were, according to news broadcasts right now, that's across the news stations, there were shots fired at the airport. So please have all of your crew stay in the lounge."
After flying from Anchorage, Alaska, to Minneapolis to Fort Lauderdale, Santiago retrieved the hard-sided gun case he had checked from the baggage carousel in Terminal 2. He took the case into a nearby bathroom stall, where he loaded his gun and put it in his waistband.
He pulled out the gun and started shooting as he walked through the baggage claim area, authorities said. People hid behind chairs and pieces of luggage as the shooter, who appeared calm, continued squeezing the trigger without saying anything. He aimed at victims' heads, FBI agents said.
After running through two clips of bullets, he threw his gun to the ground and lay down, spread-eagled on the carpet until deputies arrived to arrest him.
More than an hour after the shooting, unsubstantiated reports of additional gunshots set off panic in other terminals, with passengers and workers running, screaming and tripping over each other, leading law enforcement officers to sweep terminals and parking garages with guns drawn.
"There's panic in here," one man Terminal 3 told the 911 dispatcher.
The dispatcher said, "I need you to try to hide."
"Everyone's hiding. Everyone's hiding."
"I'm hiding in the janitor's closet," said one woman calling from Terminal 3. "Ma'am, please."
The dispatcher responded, "We are aware of the situation, we have units out there."
The woman started to panic. "Oh my God, oh my God. There's seven people in here with me, ma'am."
The five people who died in the Jan. 6 mass shooting were Mary Louise Amzibel, 69, of Dover, Del., Michael John Oehme, 57, of Council Bluffs, Iowa, Olga M. Woltering, 84, of Marietta, Ga., Shirley Wells Timmons, 70, of Senecaville, Ohio, and Terry Michael Andres, 62, of Virginia Beach, Va.
The wounded include Amzibel's husband, Edward; Timmons' husband, Steve; and Oehme's wife, Kari; identified only by their initials in the indictment. The other three survivors have not been publicly identified.
Santiago, who previously served in the Puerto Rico National Guard, was suffering from mental health issues when he returned from his National Guard tour in Iraq in 2011. His family said he was hearing voices and hallucinating.
He was discharged for unsatisfactory performance from the Alaska Army National Guard in August.
Two months before the airport attack, Santiago went to the FBI office in Anchorage and complained of mental health problems. He told agents that his mind was being controlled by the U.S. government and he was having "terroristic thoughts."
He voluntarily entered a psychiatric hospital. After less than a week in the hospital, the gun he used in the Fort Lauderdale shooting was returned to him by local police in Alaska.
FBI agents say that Santiago confessed to planning the massacre and told investigators he traveled to South Florida to carry it out. He bought a one-way ticket from his home in Anchorage, and caught a connecting flight in Minneapolis to Fort Lauderdale.
Santiago is due in federal court in Miami on Friday morning for his first hearing with the trial judge assigned to his case. On Tuesday U.S. District Judge Beth Bloom scheduled a tentative trial date of March 20 but that could be postponed, especially if prosecutors decide to seek the death penalty.
Most of the charges against Santiago carry a maximum penalty of life in federal prison or death. The final call on whether to seek death lies with the next U.S. attorney general, and the decision-making process can take months.
