Passenger in La Guardia ‘Bomb Scare’ Was Just Adjusting Camera: Report

An emergency response to a flight from Indianapolis landing at La Guardia Airport was based on a misunderstanding, according to the New York Daily News. Citing anonymous sources, the newspaper reported Sunday afternoon that a woman aboard the American Airlines Flight 4817 mistook another passenger’s vintage camera for a bomb. She had glimpsed a man scrolling through videos and photos of old cameras on his phone and thought he had been searching for bomb-making instructions, the Daily News reports. When the man then reportedly pulled out his own camera and began to tinker with it, she assumed he was priming an explosive.

After the landing, federal agents and Port Authority officers detained the man for several hours. A spokesperson attributed the incident to unspecified “passenger behavior” at the time. The law enforcement agencies investigating the incident have since jointly determined “that there was no criminality on the part of the passenger” and released him without charge, a Port Authority spokesperson said Sunday.