MIAMI – Esteban Santiago, the former U.S. Army reservist and Iraq War veteran who confessed to killing five people and injuring six during a shooting last year at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, pleaded guilty Wednesday.
Santiago, who was diagnosed with schizophrenia, was in federal court in Miami for a mental competency hearing. His attorney said he was getting mental health treatment and was legally competent.
U.S. District Judge Beth Bloom went through a question-and-answer session before allowing Santiago to plead guilty to five counts of committing violence causing death at an international airport and six counts of committing violence causing serious bodily injury at an international airport.
Bloom asked Santiago why he decided to go on a killing spree inside the airport Jan. 6, 2017.
"I don't know," Santiago said. "I wasn't thinking at that moment. A lot of things were going on in my mind -- messages."
Heather Holmes, a psychologist who has met with Santiago six times since Feb. 7, 2017, told the judge that Santiago has been spending his time behind bars reading Harry Potter and listening to NPR. He gets to see his mother and talks to his toddler son's mother for updates. She said she spent at least an hour with Santiago each time she met with him.
"He is really the best I've ever seen him," Holmes said during the hearing adding that he was taking psychotropic and anti-psychotic medication and "his prognosis is good in terms of his mental illness."
A few months before the shooting at FLL, Santiago was in psychiatric care. He was so afraid about what the voices in his head were telling him to do that he walked into an FBI office in Anchorage, where he lived. He told them the voices wanted him to fight for the Islamic State. The Anchorage Police Department took him for a psychiatric evaluation and took his handgun. They returned it to him in December.
Now that he is getting psychiatric treatment in prison, Bloom agreed with Santiago's attorney that Santiago was legally competent to agree to the terms of a plea agreement. Under the terms of the agreement, prosecutors won't be seeking the death penalty and Santiago, 28, will be sentenced to five life terms plus 120 years without a right to appeal.
U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions approved. Prosecutors said the victims' relatives also approved of the agreement.
Santiago confessed to firing his gun 15 times at FLL' s Terminal 2, after he arrived on a one-way Delta Airlines flight from Anchorage, Alaska. Authorities said he used a 9mm handgun with two loaded ammunition clips.
According to the plea agreement, Santiago walked into a restroom to load the handgun, walked out at 12:52 p.m., and then aimed and fired at the heads and bodies of passengers until he ran out of ammunition.
Santiago reloaded his gun, and when he ran out of bullets, he jumped down to the floor to surrender to a Broward Sheriff's Office deputy. Olga Welterkng, 84, Shirley Timmons, 70, Mary Amzibel, 69, Terry Andres, 62, and Michael Oehme, 56, were killed in the shooting. Six unidentified victims were wounded. One lost an eye and part of the brain, and another required facial reconstruction.
"When the active killer fired indiscriminately in the baggage claim area on that fateful day, lives were lost and other lives were forever changed by his heartless, violent actions," Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel said in a statement after the hearing. "I commend the work of our law enforcement partners and the U.S. Department of Justice that led to today's outcome. I can only hope that the resolution of this case brings some peace to the affected families."
Santiago is scheduled to be formally sentenced at 9:30 a.m., Aug. 17.
