FBI: Gunman Went to L.A. to Kill

July 5, 2002
By Ryan Pearson, Associated Press Writer


LOS ANGELES –– The Egyptian immigrant who gunned down two people at Israel's El Al ticket counter went to the Los Angeles airport intending to kill, the FBI said Friday.

"It appears he went there with the intention of killing. Why he did that is what we are still trying to determine," FBI agent Richard Garcia said.

Hesham Mohamed Hadayet, a 41-year-old limousine driver, was shot to death by an El Al guard.The shootout came on the Fourth of July, when the possibility of terror attacks had put security on high alert around the country. Federal officials, however, withheld judgment on whether to label the attack as terrorism.

"There is no evidence, no indication at this time that this is terrorists," White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said Friday. He added that President Bush extends his condolences to the victims.

Earlier, FBI spokesman Matt McLaughlin said: "We can't rule that out, but there's nothing to indicate terrorism at this point." He suggested it might be a hate crime, as did Garcia.

Israeli officials said they consider the shooting a terror attack.

Ticket agent Victoria Hen, 25, and Yaakov Aminov, 46, a jeweler and father of eight who was dropping off a friend, were fatally shot before two El Al guards overwhelmed Hadayet. Travelers dove to the ground or scattered for cover as the gunfire erupted.

The guards and a woman were wounded; another woman suffered heart problems.

Hadayet listed July 4 as his birthday on one of two driver's licenses. The FBI released his name late Thursday as police in suburban Irvine, 35 miles southeast of the airport, went to his apartment to check on his family. Hadayet's wife and two sons had gone to Egypt for the summer, neighbors said.

Federal agents later arrived with a search warrant to examine the apartment, from which Hadayet ran his livery service, Five Star Limo. They carried away a computer, books, binders, and boxes and bags of material.

In Cairo, Hassan Mostafa Mahfouz, a retired general who is married to Hadayet's aunt, said the suspect's wife and sister were taken in for questioning by Egyptian intelligence. Mahfouz said the news of the shooting left him in disbelief.

Police also visited the apartment of Hadayet's father, in a middle-income area of Cairo, security guards at the building said.

Neighbors said Hadayet was quiet but became incensed when an upstairs neighbor hung large American and Marine Corps flags from a balcony above his front door after Sept. 11. The flags remained there Thursday night.

That neighbor declined to talk to reporters, but another neighbor, Steve Thompson, said Hadayet "complained about it to the apartment manager. He thought it was being thrown in his face."

Hadayet, who also went by the last name Ali, had California driver's licenses listing two different birth dates – April 7, 1961, and July 4, 1961 – according to the FBI.

The FBI also released a photograph of Hadayet that was taken for gun registrations.

The gunman carried a .45-caliber semiautomatic Glock pistol, a 9 mm handgun and a 6-inch knife, but had no identification, said Ron Iden, assistant director of the Los Angeles FBI office.

"He had extra ammunition and magazines ready to go," McLaughlin said.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A29270-2002Jul5.html