Another week, another mass shooting… this time at Los Angeles International Airport

A tick­et­ed pas­sen­ger wield­ing a semi­au­to­mat­ic weapon opened fire at a Los Ange­les Inter­na­tion­al Air­port secu­ri­ty check­point and then pro­ceed­ed into the air­port’s Ter­mi­nal 3, where he con­tin­ued shoot­ing until he was con­front­ed by police, who then shot him, the Los Ange­les Times is report­ing.

Patrick Gan­non, the LAX police chief, said the gun­man entered Ter­mi­nal 3 at 9:20 AM. He pulled an assault rifle out of his bag and began fir­ing. He moved into the screen­ing area and con­tin­ued shoot­ing, Gan­non said. He got past the check­point and moved fur­ther into the terminal.

Author­i­ties tracked him down and shot him near a Burg­er King.

Ver­non Car­de­nas, 45, of West Hol­ly­wood said he was at the air­port on his way to Philadel­phia when the shoot­ing occurred.

“Sit­ting down, all of a sud­den, lit­er­al­ly just out of the blue, you hear a rum­ble in the back­ground and a cou­ple of sec­onds lat­er, peo­ple are run­ning at me,” said Car­de­nas, who does cast­ing for the Fox tele­vi­sion show “Mas­terChef.” He described the scene as “may­hem,” with cou­ples cry­ing and par­ents who couldn’t find their children.

The Times and oth­er media ini­tial­ly report­ed the gun­man was or might have been a Trans­porta­tion Secu­ri­ty Admin­is­tra­tion employ­ee, but law enforce­ment has now clar­i­fied they don’t think the gun­man ever worked for TSA.

Fur­ther­more, the shoot­er is now said to be alive and in crit­i­cal con­di­tion… he was pre­vi­ous­ly said to have been killed. It just goes to show how ear­ly report­ing about a tragedy like this can be laden with misinformation.

One TSA work­er was killed by the gun­man, and half a dozen oth­er indi­vid­u­als were report­ed­ly wound­ed, includ­ing sev­er­al TSA agents.

The shoot­ing has prompt­ed flight can­cel­la­tions and a halt to nor­mal oper­a­tions at LAX as author­i­ties try to stitch togeth­er what hap­pened. Some flights were rerout­ed to LA/Ontario Inter­na­tion­al Air­port, which is over fifty-six miles away. All flights were tem­porar­i­ly ground­ed in the imme­di­ate after­math of the shooting.

The White House said Pres­i­dent Oba­ma had been informed of the inci­dent and was mon­i­tor­ing devel­op­ments. The FBI has been put in charge of the investigation.

If the shoot­er sur­vives, per­haps we’ll be able to find out more about his motives (assum­ing the shoot­er was a male). Regard­less, it’s very sad that once again, sense­less gun vio­lence has claimed an inno­cent life and left oth­ers wounded.