The suspicious items were found at Oklahoma’s Will Rogers International Airport (OKC), according to the TSA
Credit: TSA OKC; Etienne Laurent/Los Angeles Times/Getty
NEED TO KNOW
- A TSA officer at Oklahoma’s Will Rogers International Airport (OKC) flagged a suspicious item while screening a passenger’s checked bag
- While the item was identified as a replica detonator, a bomb squad was still called and the item was not allowed on the aircraft
- TSA officers recently found another unusual item, stolen Civil War-era cannonballs, in checked luggage at Alabama’s Gulf Shores Airport
A bomb squad responded to an incident at Oklahoma’s Will Rogers International Airport (OKC) after a TSA officer came across a concerning item in a passenger’s checked bag.
Officer Faith Stonebraker was screening luggage at the Oklahoma City Airport’s checked baggage resolution area when she spotted the item on her X-ray screen, the agency shared in one of its “Employee Stories,” published on Thursday, Aug. 27.
Stonebraker, who has 12 years of screening experience, immediately stopped the luggage, recalling: “I saw multiple alarming items in what appeared to be a hard-sided case. I suspected the first alarming item and was able to clear the two other alarms.”
She then called for Supervisory TSA Officer Michael Tippie to take a look at the X-ray image, which revealed “a mass inside a pipe-like object.” After TSA OKC Explosives Specialist Patrick McKee was alerted, he requested the TSA OKC Coordination Center and local law enforcement be notified, who then called the Oklahoma City Bomb Squad to the airport.
Credit: TSA OKC
The alarming items in the passenger’s checked bag were determined to be “realistic replica detonators inside fracking equipment used for extracting oil or natural gas from the ground,” according to the TSA.
Tippie said he alerted higher authorities because he was not willing to rule the items out as a potential threat, despite them not appearing to have similarities consistent with a typical pipe bomb.
“I had never seen anything like it, but I remember thinking, ‘This looks like very expensive equipment.’ What caused me concern was the multiple explosives trace detection alarms, and there was a mass inside a pipe-like item I could not resolve,” he explained.
While McKee immediately recognized that the items included “dummy training detonators,” he said he still had to consider them as a possible threat and determine whether there were any explosives.
McKee added, “If there is a possible explosive threat identified, the only option is to elevate to law enforcement and the bomb squad.” The squad then removed the faux detonators and declared the items to be safe.
Credit: TSA OKC
However, they were still not allowed on the aircraft, Tippie said, because improvised explosive device (IED) components present TSA officers with the difficulty of determining “whether such materials are inert.”
“Given the seriousness of the potential consequences, it is not appropriate to allow any item that replicates an IED or IED component on an aircraft,” Tippie added.
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Last month, TSA officers at Gulf Shores International Airport (JKA) in Alabama came across more unusual items when they discovered stolen Civil War-era cannonballs hidden inside a passenger’s checked bag.
While the cannonballs were determined not to be explosives or have any active components, local police were still called to investigate. The police investigation confirmed the cannonballs were in fact stolen from nearby Fort Morgan, and they were later returned to the historic site.
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