MB Woman Shares LAX Experience

Friday was to be an exciting day for Linda Malek. She was heading to Pennsylvania to visit her daughter, a freshman at Muhlenberg College, who was performing in the school's musical theater production. Unfortunately, Malek got a little more excitement than she bargained for.

She arrived early for her 11 a.m. flight at Los Angeles International Airport and was killing time when, at about 10 a.m., people started running from the back of the terminal and there was talk of a crazy person.

"Nobody knew what was going on," Malek said.

What was going on was a lone gunman had fired shots inside a neighboring terminal. 

Malek said she and the other passengers awaiting their flights were herded out the back and onto the tarmac, where they stood for about an hour. 

"Nobody came out to tell us anything. The only way we got any news was by using our cell phones," she said.

Eventually, buses were brought to pick up the waiting passengers, but again, she said, they were given no explanation.

"We had no idea where we were going or how long it was going to take," Malek said.

The buses dropped the passengers off at LAX's Tom Bradley terminal, where Malek estimated there were thousands of people, though she said she couldn't tell exactly how dense the crowd was.

"We were literally standing. There was no water, no food, very little bathroom facilities," she told Patch. 

Malek said it took about two hours to get water.

"It was clear that whatever preparation planning of evacuations they did in the airport, this was not part of it," she said, adding the Red Cross eventually came and provided rudimentary snacks.

The first update passengers got, she said, came from some Southwest Airlines (she was flying U.S. Airways) employees, though the airline employs could not tell them when they might be released.

Finally, at a little before 3 p.m., four hours after her flight had originally been scheduled to leave, the passengers were herded through terminal one to go back through security, though, Malek said, TSA wasn't ready for them.

She did eventually eventually get a flight out of Los Angeles, arriving in Philadelphia at 3 a.m. and Allentown at 5 a.m., where she went straight to breakfast with her daughter, who she got to see perform.

"I think my takeaway from this was clearly they have a little work to do," she said. "I can't imagine if it had not been specifically located. Had it been more broad based, I don't know what they would have done."

—Read Laura Mandracchia, another Manhattan Beach resident's, LAX experience here.