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Travelers were screened by Transportation Security Administration agents after Terminal 3 was re-opened a day after a shooting at Los Angeles International Airport on Saturday.
LOS ANGELES — One was a troubled 23-year-old, with an assault rifle and an apparent grudge against the government, who witnesses said seemed to be hunting for airport security officials. The other was a 39-year-old father of two who for three years had been a screener of the torrent of passengers who move through the security lines at Los Angeles International Airport.
In a few chaotic minutes on Friday morning, their paths crossed by happenstance, and the security agent, Gerardo I. Hernandez, lay dead. Paul A. Ciancia, identified by the police as the gunman, was critically wounded, shot in the head by officers in pursuit to stop a rampage. All around, the everyday drudgery of passing through security gates turned into terror, passengers running for their lives and abandoning luggage as heavily armed police officers ordered them to hit the floor for safety.
As law enforcement officials sought a motive on Saturday, it became clear that Mr. Ciancia was a drifter who had come to Los Angeles without an apparent job and with a little money, according to friends, and settled with roommates for a time in an apartment complex in Atwater Village, a working-class neighborhood north of downtown Los Angeles that is an enclave for young professionals and artists. One former roommate who did not want to be identified said Saturday that Mr. Ciancia had slept on his couch from late 2012 until February of this year and did not have a job at the time. Then he left.
In court documents filed Saturday, prosecutors brought two federal charges against Mr. Ciancia — murder of a federal officer and the committing of violence at an international airport, both of which can carry a sentence of life without parole or the death penalty. The documents said a handwritten letter found at the scene showed that Mr. Ciancia "made the conscious decision to try to kill" Transportation Security Administration employees.
In a part of the letter, addressing T.S.A. employees, he wrote that he wanted to "instill fear in your traitorous minds."
There were five gunshot victims. Two of the wounded were T.S.A. agents, and two others were hurt while trying to escape.
Prosecutors said Mr. Ciancia shot Mr. Hernandez several times at point-blank range, went up an escalator, and then, seeing the wounded officer move, returned to fire again. He shot at least two other uniformed T.S.A. employees and one passenger, the documents said. The gun was described as a Smith & Wesson 223 M & P15 rifle.
Mr. Ciancia had assembled a small arsenal. Law enforcement officials said two legal guns registered to him were purchased early this year at The Target Range in Van Nuys, a neighborhood of Los Angeles. The rifle recovered at the airport was also purchased by Mr. Ciancia in the Los Angeles area, according to a senior federal official.
It was a world away from Pennsville, the small town of ranch-style houses in southern New Jersey where he grew up, his father owning an auto body shop nearby. Mr. Ciancia attended a small Catholic boys' school in nearby Wilmington, Del. Several family friends, neighbors and classmates described him as having been a reserved, quiet boy who, along with his younger brother, Taylor, seemed to be scarred by his mother's long battle with multiple sclerosis and her death in 2009.
"It was very hard for them," said Amanda Lawson, 21, a waitress in the Broadway Diner in Pennsville, who graduated from Pennsville Memorial High School in 2010 with Mr. Ciancia's brother. She described both brothers as "awkward." "They had some depression issues, and they both got obsessive," she said on Saturday.
Mr. Ciancia graduated from the Motorcycle Mechanics Institute in Orlando, Fla., in December 2011, a spokeswoman for the school said. He received a diploma that allowed him to become an entry-level motorcycle technician at a dealership or shop, according to the spokeswoman, Tina Miller.
James Mincey, who told ABC News that he was a former roommate, said he met Mr. Ciancia for lunch a week before Friday's attack.
Reporting was contributed by Noah Gilbert from Los Angeles; Alan Feuer from New York; Michael S. Schmidt and Matthew L. Wald from Washington; Bryon MacWilliams from Wilmington, Del.; and Jon Hurdle from Pennsville, N.J.
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