An armed man was shot dead by police inside St. Louis Lambert International Airport in the early hours of Friday morning after he allegedly came at them with a knife.
According to the St. Louis County Police Department, the incident occurred at around 1:05 am on November 21 as the officers were conducting a routine security patrol of the non-secure ‘landside’ area of Terminal 1.
A police spokesperson told reporters that the officers had asked the man to leave the airport as he was not a passenger and had no business in the terminal. At that point, he brandished a knife.
One of the two officers initially fired a less-than-lethal Taser at the suspect, but he continued to advance towards the cops. The second officer then discharged his service weapon at the suspect.
After shooting the suspect, the officers then provided First Aid, but the man was pronounced deceased at the scene.
Detectives from the Police Bureau of Crimes Against Persons are investigating the incident.
By the time the morning travel rush started, the crime scene had already been lifted and, apart from a swarm of local media, passengers had no idea what had occurred just hours earlier.
Like most airports across the United States, St. Louis Lambert is gearing up for a busy Thanksgiving travel period. On Thursday, the industry lobby group Airlines for America predicted a record-breaking holiday rush with carriers expected to carry 31 million passengers between November 21 and December 1.
Airlines are set to fly an average of 2.8 million passengers per day over this period, but the busiest days will be between November 29 and December 1, when as many as 3.39 million passengers will be flown on a single day.
You many want to work on your grammar for headlines . . . . going to get a lot of people here wondering why a dead man was shot by police and why the dead guy was armed to begin with.