|
Driver breaches
airport security
The car crashes past
a Lagoon Drive gate
and hits a small plane
Officials are re-evaluating security at Honolulu Airport's general aviation area after a teenager rammed a sports car through a locked perimeter gate yesterday and drove on to airport grounds.
 |  |
Witnesses said the car then started doing stunts, and speeding in and around the spaces between hangars.
"He was driving erratically, doing doughnuts, drifts, sliding and skidding," said George Hanzawa, president of George's Aviation Services, Inc.
Twice, the suspect came dangerously close to hitting Hanzawa and a group of about five of his employees.
"He looked right at us, all of us," Hanzawa said. "We had to jump out of the way."
Ishikawa said the 17-year-old male suspect clipped a golf cart driven by a man who works at a nearby aviation school, and also scratched a private plane.
Police said the teenager rammed the car head-on into a sheriff deputy's patrol car before coming to a stop between the area's second and third row of hangars. The suspect ran from his car and away from the scene, but was stopped by Hanzawa, some of his employees and a deputy sheriff.
"He was crazy," Hanzawa said. "He's on something."
The man in the golf cart and the sheriff's deputy involved in the head-on collision were taken to the Queen's Medical Center for minor injuries and later released, Ishikawa said.
Commercial flights were not affected but some private planes weren't allowed to get onto a taxiway while police investigated the incident, Ishikawa said.
The suspect, who has a Hawaii Kai address, was taken to the Queen's Medical Center as a precaution. He was arrested, but had not been charged last night.
State Sheriff Sgt. Colin Malani said no federal charges are being sought against the suspect because he is a minor.
The access gate that the suspect allegedly drove through, which is positioned at the end of Lagoon Drive near a small parking lot, has never had a security guard, Ishikawa said.
But immediately after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, state deputy sheriffs set up a security stop just past the drive's Kalewa Street intersection. Now, that checkpoint is only put up for "special events," Ishikawa said.
He said he was not sure when the transition from a full-time to an occasional checkpoint was made. "We may have to see if we have to put it back up," Ishikawa said.
But he also stressed that the security in place yesterday was enough to stop the suspect from entering any other restricted zones of the airport, including the nearest runway about 2,000 feet away.
"The driver was never anywhere near the runway," he said. "No shots were fired."
In October 2002, state sheriffs did fire at a suspect who ran through the Kalewa Street security checkpoint. In that incident, the suspect was found to be driving a stolen car and sped off before he could be stopped.
Hanzawa said that despite yesterday's incident, he's not concerned about security in the area. But he also said that it's a "vulnerable spot."
"We only have a fence," he said. "If you're going to ram it, you're going to get in."
About two months ago, a car nearly knocked down a security gate fronting Marjet Air Charter on Lagoon Drive. Marjet owner David Turk said that after the incident -- which appeared to be an accident, though the suspect fled the scene -- a security guard was posted outside the gate for about a week.