An airport employee has been arrested in connection with dry ice explosions at Los Angeles International Airport after US police stepped up patrols and increased its checks on employees.
Bennett Dicarlo, a 28-year-old employee for the ground-handling company Servisair, was booked on Tuesday for possession of a destructive device near an aircraft. He is being held on $US1 million bail.
Dicarlo took the dry ice from a plane and placed it in an employee restroom on Sunday night and another device that was found on a tarmac outside the international terminal, according to a law enforcement official.
Police had previously said they didn't believe the explosions were an act of terror because of the locations of the devices and because people weren't targeted.
No one was injured in the incidents, although some flights were delayed on Sunday.
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The incidents could be the work of a disgruntled employee over an internal labour dispute, said Los Angeles Police Department Deputy Chief Michael Downing, who heads the department's counter-terrorism and special operations bureau.
Swissport has recently agreed to acquire Servisair and the transaction is expected to close by the end of the year.
It wasn't immediately known what Dicarlo's motives were, but he was riding in a van with several others, including a supervisor, when he decided to plant one of the dry ice bombs, the official told The Associated Press. Those in the van were aware of the dry ice, the official said, but no other arrests have been made.
The bombs were made by putting dry ice in 20-ounce plastic bottles and could have caused serious injury to anyone in close proximity, Downing said.
One device exploded in an employee men's room Sunday night in Terminal 2. Remnants of an exploded bottle also were found that night on the tarmac area near the Tom Bradley International Terminal, but an employee threw it away. The same employee found an unexploded bottle on Monday evening and then reported what he had found the previous day.
Dry ice is widely used by vendors to keep food fresh.
