It’s the romantic finale to chick flicks everywhere.
Woman is leaving on a jet plane. Man realises love for woman at the very last moment. Man wreaks havoc in frantic dash to reach woman before she gets on plane, sprinting through security for one last kiss. Couple walk off screen hand in hand into the happy-ever-after. Except in this case it had the very unromantic consequence of causing a security scare that shut down a major international airport and left thousands of passengers stranded for hours. For, as video evidence has shown, it appears to have been a goodbye kiss that caused a man to slip through security at the Newark, New Jersey airport last Sunday.
As the short version of the video below shows, the nameless Romeo clearly saw the moment as an opportunity. As the short version of the video below shows, the nameless Romeo clearly saw the moment as an opportunity.
He slips underneath a security cordon to meet a departing female passenger clad in a white coat who had already passed through a security checkpoint. The man gives her what appears to be a goodbye kiss, the video showed. The couple, who remain unidentified, then walk off screen hand-in-hand against the flow of passengers. It is unclear if the woman got on to the plane. Some reports quoted witnesses who said they had spotted the man leaving the airport shortly after the incident, but it was unclear if the woman was with him. The TSA officer, who has since been placed on administrative leave, returned moments later – but the damage had been done.
Other witnesses who saw the man slip through the checkpoint had grown concerned and spoke to authorities, sparking a security clampdown that closed the airport for hours.
Thousands of passengers had to go through security screening again.
‘It is unacceptable that the Port Authority (the agency in charge of the airport) took so long to produce this tape, but now that it is public we have a better chance of getting to the bottom of this major security incident,’ Senator Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey, who released the video, said in a statement.
Vocabulary
havoc – pusztítás, rombolás
frantic – dühöng?, tomboló
to strand – vesztegel, rostokol
clad/clothe in – felöltöztet, felruház
hand-in-hand – kéz a kézben
clampdown – szigorítás
