The Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office has concluded that a 57-year-old who was found entangled in baggage belt machinery at Chicago O’Hare Airport on Thursday morning died by suicide.
Firefighters were called to an off-limits part of the airport at around 7:45 am on August 8 to reports that a person had been ‘pinned’ in machinery which makes up the airport’s baggage belt system.
The Chicago Fire Department found the unnamed woman entangled in a behind-the-scenes conveyor belt that is used to move baggage. By the time firefighters had reached the conveyor belt, the woman was already dead.
Surveillance video footage was seized by police, which found that the woman managed to access the baggage room at around 2:27 am on Thursday. There was no footage of what happened next but the medical examiner belives she died by asphyxiation from hanging.
The woman was not an employee of the airport and it remains unclear how she managed to access a part of the airport which should have been inaccessible to members of the public.
In 2020, a man managed to live and sleep in the secure passenger area of Chicago O’Hare for three months undetected until two United Airlines employees became suspicious and challenged him on what he was up to at the airport.
The man, who had arrived on a flight from Los Angeles on October 19, 2020, and was meant to be connecting to another flight the same day, showed the suspicious United staffers an airport employee ID card that had been reported missing in late October 2020.
Despite having access to a staff ID card, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) attempted to reassure the public that the man had never been able to access secure off-limits part of the airport.
Aditya Singh, 36, was charged with felony criminal trespassing in a restricted area of an airport, but the judge presiding over the case cleared him of any criminal wrongdoing.
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Ah…the wonderful TSA…”Too Stupid for America” or “Thousands Standing Around”. And the perp got off. What does that say about airport security and the justice system? Oh, wait…this is Illinois. Never mind.