Man with blade held

He allegedly tried to board
a flight with a box-cutter
blade in his shoe sole

The Stafford-brand, size 10 1/2, black dress shoes looked common enough.

But it was the box-cutter blade glued inside one of the shoes that caught the attention of security personnel at Honolulu Airport's Interisland Terminal yesterday.

The 33-year-old man who put his shoes through the screening process now faces a felony charge of attempting to board an airplane with a dangerous, concealed weapon. He's being held at the Federal Detention Center.

The Fairfax, Va., resident was on his way to visit relatives on Kauai with his wife and four children on a midday Aloha Airlines flight, according to Sidney Hayakawa, Honolulu federal security director of the Transportation Security Administration.

The man, who works for a computer software company, placed his shoes in a plastic bin for screening. One of the screeners detected a metal object in the suspect's left shoe and alerted a supervisor, who determined it was a blade.

Hayakawa said state sheriffs and a federal agent responded and found a 3 1/2- to 4-inch blade in the inner sole of the shoe.

"The sole was still glued," Hayakawa said.

"This is evidence of why we recommend passengers to remove their shoes, because we need to X-ray (them)," he said.

Contraband is usually detected in carry-on bags or a passengers' pockets, said Scott Ishikawa, spokesman for the state Department of Transportation. Sometimes, passengers forget something in their pocket or something left on their key chain, Ishikawa said.

"But the razor was in the shoe. It made us suspicious about the whole incident," he said.

There were no disruptions to operations at the airport during and following the incident, officials said.

"I don't think any of the passengers realized what took place," Hayakawa said.