A man was arrested at Chicago’s O’Hare airport this weekend after allegedly spending three months in the terminal undetected.
Man arrested after living in O’Hare
A 36-year-old man was arrested on Saturday and charged with criminal trespassing in a restricted area of an airport and theft of a misdemeanor. He was banned from entering the airport and the bail was set at $ 1,000.
The man flew from Los Angeles to Chicago on October 19, 2020 and had not left the airport security zone since. How did he finally get caught? On Saturday, two United Airlines employees approached the man and asked to see his identification, realizing that he had spent a lot of time at the terminal. At that moment, the man showed them an airport identification badge that he wore on a string around his neck.
However, the badge belonged to an operations manager who had reported the badge’s disappearance on October 26. At that point, 911 was called, at which point the man was taken into custody.
Why did the man stay at the airport?
This is the part of the story that is difficult to understand. Why would anyone want to spend a few months living in O’Hare? The man was “afraid to come home because of COVID” and so decided to spend months at the airport. He survived by asking other passengers to give him money to buy food. Apparently, he had a place to stay and roommates in California.
In many ways, the explanation of what happened raises more questions than anything else. Probably the most dangerous part of the travel experience today is being at airports instead of airplanes, since the latter has at least much better air filtration.
Sometimes, we hear about people living in terminals due to entry restrictions for countries that change, leaving them with no options. However, this was not the case here, since it was a domestic flight.
Sometimes we also hear about homeless people trying to live in airports, but this is almost always by land, since they usually do not buy tickets.
Another story that comes to mind is that of the serial stowaway from a few years ago, who constantly found a way to get through security and get on flights, even without a ticket. She even did this several times at O’Hare Airport.
Was there any security risk here?
The judge of the case expressed disbelief about how someone could live in a “safe” part of the airport without being detected:
“So, if I understand correctly, are you telling me that an unauthorized, non-employee person was supposed to be living in a secure part of the O’Hare airport terminal from October 19, 2020 to January 16, 2021 and was not detected? I want to understand you correctly. “
Personally, I’m not really surprised:
- Just because the airside area is “safe” does not mean that everyone is being watched, but only that they have been selected and that they have a valid boarding pass on arrival or departure
- You see people sleeping at night in the airport terminals all the time
- Many airport employees can be seen at the terminal daily, so it’s not necessarily uncommon to see the same person every day
- It is even more difficult to identify people when everyone is wearing masks
Personally, I don’t find that detail surprising, and I’m not shocked that he managed to live in O’Hare for three months undetected. The real question is why he would want to do that …
Result
A man was arrested after living at Chicago’s O’Hare airport for three months, allegedly because he was afraid to fly home due to the coronavirus. I’m not sure if I follow the logic, but this is a strange situation. The man was eventually arrested on Sunday after being approached by officials and asked to show his identity. At that point, it was determined that he had a stolen airport employee ID string.
What do you think of this situation?