Pennsville, New Jersey: The father of the young man suspected of carrying out a fatal shooting at Los Angeles International Airport called his local police chief around the time of the shooting to report that his son had sent a suicidal text message to a sibling and he needed to find him, a New Jersey police chief said.
Paul Ciancia, the owner of an auto-body shop in southern New Jersey and father of the 23-year-old suspect of the same name, called Pennsville Police Chief Allen Cummings in the early afternoon to tell him one of his children had received a text message from the younger Ciancia "in reference to him taking his own life," the chief told The Associated Press.
Across the country and around the same time Friday, authorities say, his son was shooting his way past a security checkpoint at the airport with a semi-automatic rifle, killing a security officer and wounding other people. Ciancia was injured in a shootout and taken into custody, police said.
A motive wasn't clear, but Ciancia was wearing fatigues and carrying a bag containing a handwritten note that said he "wanted to kill TSA and pigs," according to a law enforcement official who was not authorized to discuss the investigation publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.
Cummings said his police department in Pennsville, New Jersey, had never had dealings with the younger Ciancia, and neighbors in the working-class city of about 14,000 across the broad Delaware River from Wilmington, Delaware, didn't have a clue anything might have been wrong.
