Former Cuban Olympian Smashes SUV Into Airport Terminal

Police and airport authorities in Fort Lauderdale (FL) are picking up the pieces after an SUV, driven by a former Olympic medalist from Cuba, slammed into the terminal at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport.

"We thought it was terrorists," said Philadelphia resident June DeLuca, who was in the terminal at the time. She was interviewed by the Miami Herald. "I thought we were all gonna die."

The red Lincoln Navigator smashed its way through the doors of Terminal 3 Sunday morning, blasting through the ticket counter and hitting a wall. Amazingly, only the driver, 33-year old Alexis Vila, was injured.

Monday, authorities were at a loss to explain why Vila drove his vehicle into the terminal. A wrestler and bronze medal weightlifter in the 1996 Olympics, Vila defected from his native Cuba in 1997. He is now a Michigan resident. After he crashed into the Southeast Airlines ticket counter, authorities say he tried to run away. He was tackled by two deputies and an air marshal, all of whom witnessed the bizarre incident.

Fortunately, passenger traffic at the airport was relatively light Sunday, right in the middle of the holiday weekend.

"If this would've been yesterday [Saturday], there would have been 100 people here," airport spokesman Steve Belleme told the Herald. "There are times of the day where there's a queue going out the door."

Authorities said Vilas (shown above, throwing a Pennsylvania wrestler during a 2001 match) hit the terminal at a relatively high rate of speed, with no apparent intention of stopping.

"There's not a skid mark. It's not like he tried to stop," said Broward County Sheriff's spokesman Hugh Graf. Damage to the terminal building was estimated at $100,000.

The Security Question

So how did this Olympian and his SUV make it all the way into the terminal? Broward County Sheriff Ken Jenne said, ever since the September 11th terrorist attacks, he's been telling airport officials to install barriers between the terminal sidewalk and the curb to prevent just such an occurrence.

"We felt very strongly that it's in everybody's interest to do it," Jenne told the Miami paper. "They have not done it. We would continue recommending . . . it. An automobile would have a very difficult time, if not an impossible time, getting through that."

What did county officials in charge of security improvements at the airport have to say about Jenne's recommendations? Nothing. They hadn't heard of them.

"You can do all the best security initiatives you can think of, and people are creative and find ways around them," Broward County Mayor Ilene Lieberman told the Herald.

In the wake of the drive-through incident, the TSA's eastern field director, Lauren Stover, promised to meet with both airport officials and Sheriff Jenne. "We're going to work with the airport to make sure from the curb to the cockpit that things are safe," she said. "There's a lot of things we can require of an airport that can end up putting them out of business. We have to work with them to balance out the security needs with real-time threats."

FMI: www.fll.net