Good evening. I'm uh county sheriff Baltier and what I'm going to tell you now is what we know at this stage of the investigation. It's all preliminary. Everything's subject to change. But what we were able to determine an allegiance flight landed here probably about two hours ago now from uh Cincinnati. It was due to turn around quickly and return to Cincinnati. There were about 170 passengers on the plane as it taxied away from the gate and out onto the runway. Um, as it was on the runway getting ready to head back to Cincinnati, uh, one of the flight attendants over opened the rear lavatory door and written on that lavatory door was a bomb threat, a threat to place an explosive device. It was very explicit. I'm not going to get into the details of it because it's part of the ongoing uh, criminal investigation that we're conducting right now. Uh, but the flight attendant immediately notified the pilot. The pilot stopped the plane out there on the runway and they evacuated the passengers. Uh because of the nature of the threat, the threat is very broad and the threat is not limited to just that particular plane. In fact, it was it was including all allegiance planes here at St. Peter International Airport which made it incumbent upon us uh to secure all the aircraft and there were aircraft that were incoming some were here on the ground. So, we had to get all the passengers off all the planes. We have numerous bomb dogs from the Penelis County Sheriff's Office and surrounding agencies that are here. And we are about probably about 98% complete with searching all of the planes with the bomb dogs and we found no evidence of any explosive devices. We should be completed with that and I'm at this stage prepared to tell you that the airport is safe. There is no immediate threat. Uh we'll complete uh the search with the bomb dogs of the last remaining couple of bags here probably in the next uh few minutes. Uh so once we do that uh we'll continue conducting the investigation. We have detectives here from our threat management division that are interviewing everybody that's on the plane crew etc. Uh, and I anticipate shortly uh being able to turn the airport back over uh to uh the airport so that they can make decisions and the legion can make decisions and TSA can make decisions about how uh they reboard these passengers and able to get them out of here. That's not going to happen immediately. Uh there's going to take some time to do that uh because some of these passengers are outside of the sterile area. The sterile area may have to be cleared. So there a lot of logistics that have to go on. Uh, and we also have to finish conducting interviews of the everybody that was on the point in question. So, that's about all I can tell you at the moment. Um, and I'll take any questions that you have. Any suspects so far, Sheriff? Yes, but I'm not going to get into that right now. Anyone in custody at this point? Nobody in custody, but we do have some people that uh their actions were suspicious and we're looking into it. Uh but again, I want to stress that um it's an active ongoing investigation. Uh and uh right now I I'm comfortable in saying that there is no immediate threat to anybody that was on any of those planes or uh here at the airport. It does look like right now from everything I can tell and it's very serious when people do something like this that it is um just a a threat uh to place the bombs and to uh blow up the aircraft. So uh right now there's no evidence that anybody actually did anything. Sheriff is the the flight was incoming from Cincinnati. Um, I understand from passengers that flight was delayed coming in from Cincinnati. With the turnaround time being so quick, do you believe that the suspect was somebody who was a passenger on that incoming flight from Cincinnati or somebody who was on the plane that is currently being detained? So, the answer is it's we don't know. Uh, and and everybody uh is suspect, including crew members. Uh, and so it isn't just limited to potential passengers. We're looking at it. uh very seriously uh of course and we don't know when it happened or where it happened. Of course, one of the things we're trying to figure out is that writing on the plane when it arrived here and nobody saw it or was it written while it was here. So again, those are the things we're trying to figure out. Uh but uh everybody's a suspect at this point. We do have some specific leads that we're following up. I'm not going to get into those. Uh but hopefully within the next it's going to take some time. Hopefully by later tonight or tomorrow morning, we'll have some ideas to more of what happened. Is your suspect a member of the crew or I'm not going to talk about that. The ambulances outside, were they just staged as a precaution? Precautionary because of the nature of it, because of the volume uh that was impacted. Again, the threat was against not just that airplane, but all the allegian aircraft, and there were several here uh that were carrying passengers to various destinations around the country. So, that was all precautionary. The sheriff there's more suspects at this time. I'm not going to get into more details on that. Um, sheriff, if there were planes that from here that took off and had other destinations that they were landing in, did you coordinate with agencies and other cities that their the planes originated from PIE? So, from the time the threat was made until I I believe that we have accounted for all of the planes that would be encompassed by the threat. Okay. So, you know, we're want to be very cautious about this. We're doing our due diligence on it. We want to make sure everybody's safe and I'm very comfortable that we have searched all the planes and we have all the planes accounted for that would be within the scope of the threat and how Allegent works with their pushes and everything goes in volume here so you don't have sporadic takeoff. Everything seems to go at the same time. So I think that we're uh accounting for everything. Okay. I know this probably isn't a question for you but in case you know are flights being delayed or cancelled at this point. That's not my area of responsibility as far as delayed or can they're certainly delayed. you know, whether Allegian will try and get some of those planes out of here tonight is up to them. Um, and you know, we will work with them to uh get clear the airport as soon as possible, help them with passengers, getting people uh into the screening area so TSA can do its job. But there's a lot of planes here and a lot of people and you know whether they can do that tonight, that's going to have to be a legion question. Any surveillance that can be of assistance to the investigation? I'm not going to get into details. There's there's a lot there. It's ongoing. Um, twofold, uh, sheriff. One, about how many planes did you have to clear, you know, off the top of my head, I think there's at least six here. Okay. Somewhere in that number. And yeah, half a dozen or so, uh, give or take, uh, that were here. Most of them were at the gate. Some again, some incoming. And then we had the one that was the I'll call it the in question plane that was out on the runway itself. And then in terms of the charges that somebody faces for a bomb threat, I mean is it is there a heightened or is there escalating factor when it involves aviation and the FAA? I mean are there federal charges that you can tack on on top of this? So you know you know possibly. I don't know. Uh you know again we're very early in the investigation. uh threatened to place an explosive device is a very serious crime and there are escalating factors depending upon the nature of it under state law. Uh they can lead to very serious penalties including life in prison. Uh but it is an airport. Uh there is some federal involvement and whether that and what that would be is something to consider down the road. Right now we have to conduct our investigation and see if we can establish probable cause to arrest someone uh before we can really get there. How disruptive, taxing, frustrating is a case like this? Yeah, off the charts, you know, and not for us as much as it is for the flying public and for the airport. You got to feel for these people who just came to the airport to get on a flight to go about their business, to go see family, friends, uh, take care of business, uh, etc. And, uh, to say it's a disruption and to say it's a mess is an understatement. Um, and we have a tremendous amount, and you can see here, we have a tremendous amount of deputies of resources that are here. Fire, EMS, the airport, fire department. There there's a lot of first responder resources because somebody did this. Do you train for something like this? Of course. Of course. Sheriff, you think you touched on this, but at this point, could you say this is like a singular case, homegrown one man show, or is it some of them may be a part of a broader network? Don't know. Absolutely. You know, and you know, and again, um I would say that the and I'll say this is this much about it. This was not a threat that targeted an individual. It targeted the plane and the airline. So, um, when you say homegrown, you know, you know, again, we don't know anything more about it at this point. That's why we got to conduct the investigation, but there wasn't a a named individual as a threat. Well, I understand that the passengers on that Cincinnati flight in question are being held in a contained area right now. Is that so you can do the interviews and background checks that you need to do with all those? Correct. We have uh probably 20 detectives that are conducting interviews uh for most of the passengers. Those are going to go very quickly. We just want to get their information, get basic background, uh who saw what did anybody they see people using the restroom, you know, just basic stuff. So, um in fact, several of those most of those are probably already completed by now. So, yes, the answer to that is is that we had them separated so that we could conduct conduct interviews as part of the investigation. Would uh would anything be even be able like explosive device be able to get through TSA if it does turn out to be a passenger? You know, I can't comment on that. You know, I mean, you know, TSA does a great job. Uh there is no perfect in this world. Uh you know, stuff happens. But again, we have no evidence of that whatsoever. Uh at this point, uh based upon the searching that we've done, and I'd say thoroughly, uh again, I'm very comfortable. I wouldn't be standing here telling you if I thought there was one out of concerned that we should be concerned there's a threat to anybody here at the airport. So, I'm comfortable that this was at this point just a threat um and that there's no evidence of an actual explosive device uh that was placed. So, I don't I don't anticipate uh that there'll be more information tonight because I think that it's going to take us all night to conduct these interviews and try and figure out what happened. Uh we'll probably release some information as we know more perhaps in the morning, but just for your own uh planning purposes. I wouldn't anticipate another press conference on this tonight.