Kansas City airport terminal shut down today amid ‘scare,’ ‘chaos’

Associated Press

KANSAS CITY, Mo.

Security agents detained a man and shut down one of three terminals at the main airport in Kansas City Sunday after detecting suspicious items inside his carry-on bag on the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

The man was stopped about 9:30 a.m. at the Southwest Airlines checkpoint at Kansas City International Airport. Transportation security agents who detected suspicious items in his bag asked to examine them, and he was detained when he refused, airline and law enforcement officials said.

The suspicious items tested negative for explosive materials, according to a statement from the Transportation Security Administration. A bomb squad and bomb-sniffing dogs remained on the scene Sunday afternoon, and passengers were being rescreened.

FBI spokeswoman Bridget Patton declined to say what the man was carrying, but she said a package was “disrupted in such a way to preserve” evidence by the bomb squad. The man is the custody of airport security, she said.

TSA released a statement confirming the area around the checkpoint was evacuated “out of an abundance of caution.” Several TSA officials did not respond to calls requesting more details Sunday. Laura Brown, spokeswoman for the Federal Aviation Administration, referred questions to the TSA.

“It was chaos,” said Jim Johnson, 56, an engineer from Portland, Ore., who was on his way to Nashville, Tenn., for business. “We weren’t told anything except there was a scare. They took us to a concourse that was under construction and we waited there 10 to 15 minutes while they tried to figure out what they were going to do with us.”