LEOMINSTER, Mass. (AP) — The music was blaring on a February afternoon when Francisco Torres stopped by a Massachusetts barbershop, proclaiming he was half-angel, half-devil.

He wanted a dozen folks to come outdoors the shop and shoot him with an automatic weapon stored in his vehicle trunk. Ahead of everyone could make sense of the request, Torres fled the shop and drove off. They by no means saw a weapon and he didn’t return.

“I didn’t get what he was saying but then I realized he was speaking about a gun. I told him there are children in right here, why are you saying this,” mentioned Saul Perez, who was going to good friends at the shop and noted that an employee known as 911, ushered kids into the back and shut down the shop. “I was spooked.”

The incident took spot about a week prior to Torres would be arrested for attacking a flight attendant and attempting to open the plane’s emergency door on a cross-nation United flight from Los Angeles to Boston earlier this month.

Confrontations on flights have skyrocketed given that the pandemic began, with some altercations captured and replayed endlessly on social media.

In a video taken by a fellow passenger, Torres loudly threatens to kill folks and promises a bloodbath prior to charging the front of the plane, exactly where a group of passengers tackled him down to the ground to restrain him.

He remains behind bars pending a mental overall health evaluation, with a judge ruling he “may presently be suffering from a mental illness or defect rendering him mentally incompetent.”

Torres objected to the evaluation by means of his federal public defender, Joshua Hanye, who didn’t return a get in touch with Thursday searching for further comment. A relative for Torres would not comment on the case.

The flight attack was element of a decadeslong pattern of Torres demonstrating indicators of a mental illness. He spent time in mental overall health facilities, according to lawsuits given that closed that he filed in 2021 and 2022 against two hospitals in Massachusetts. Torres says he argued in one particular of the lawsuits that he was misdiagnosed for a mental illness and, in the other, that he was discriminated against for becoming vegan.

In December 2022, police confronted him at his property in Worcester County, exactly where he was outdoors in his underwear saying he was protesting climate alter, according to a police report. On yet another occasion in 2021, police responded to a get in touch with from his mother reporting that he was yelling “homicidal threats” out a window. He told police that he was in Globe War three and he had a unique device providing him “super sonic hearing,” which he utilised to listen to his neighbors speaking about him.

His case history demonstrates the challenges facing airlines and federal regulators when handling passengers like Torres. Specially given that authorities say information shows these with mental illnesses are extra usually the victims of crimes than these accountable for committing violent acts.

In spite of repeated run-ins with police, authorities mentioned that he hardly ever acted violent. He as soon as was accused of grabbing his mother’s arm, but these charges have been dismissed. He didn’t legally personal a weapon, even although he usually talked about guns. And there have been no indicators of problems when he boarded that cross-county flight final month, a passenger mentioned, or in the course of the initially 5 hours in the air.

“He is definitely a nonviolent offender,” mentioned Leominster Police Chief Aaron Kennedy, who is familiar with Torres from prior run-ins. “This guy was quite mild.”

And even if previous incidents raised red flags, authorities mentioned there is not a entire lot that airline corporations can or really should be carrying out. Airlines say they do not share banned passenger lists with each and every other, although there have been a handful of circumstances so notorious that the passenger’s name became extensively recognized.

The FBI maintains a no-fly list for folks suspected of terrorism, to which unique agents and other authorized government workers can submit names for consideration.

Folks with mental illnesses are not prohibited from finding on a plane, according to Jeffrey Value, an aviation-safety professional at Metropolitan State University of Denver. Federal law offers U.S. citizens “a public proper of transit by means of the navigable airspace,” he mentioned.

Legislation backed by airlines and their labor unions was introduced in Congress final year to produce a new no-fly list such as folks who have been charged or fined for interfering with airline crews. The bills died without having hearings in the Senate or Property, but backers program to re-introduce them later this month.

Various Republican senators opposed the proposal, saying it could be utilised to punish critics of the federal rule requiring passengers to put on masks — even to “equate them to terrorists.” From January 2021 to April 2022, whilst the federal mask mandate was nonetheless in impact, the vast majority of unruly-passenger circumstances reported by airlines involved disputes more than masks, according to Federal Aviation Administration figures.

Some liberal groups also opposed the legislation, arguing that the existing no-fly list of folks suspected of terrorism is opaque and unfair.

The American Civil Liberties Union has sued the government quite a few occasions more than the final decade on behalf of folks who didn’t know why they have been on the list or how to be removed from it. The ACLU also has accused the FBI of placing some folks on the list to stress them to turn into informants in counter-terrorist investigations against Muslim communities in the U.S.

The captain of an airline flight can determine not to fly with a unique passenger on board, while flight attendants say this generally takes place when a passenger seems to be drunk.

The government runs what it calls “trusted traveler” applications such as TSA PreCheck, which lets folks who are fingerprinted and pass a background verify speed by means of safety without having removing footwear, belts, jackets and laptops from their bags. Folks can be denied PreCheck for particular crimes, which extends to these who are identified not guilty by cause of insanity. But of course folks who are denied PreCheck can nonetheless fly.

Adding travelers like Torres to any no-fly list or barring them from a flight raises a host of logistical and constitutional inquiries. And figuring out who would get on a list would be controversial in a nation that prides itself on defending person rights and maintaining overall health data private by following strict HIPAA guidelines.

Plus, obtaining a “mental overall health challenge” is “not a prediction, necessarily, that someone’s going to have outbursts, have unpredictable behavior,” mentioned Lynn Bufka, a psychologist and the American Psychological Association’s associate chief of practice transformation. “That’s not going to be a fantastic marker for figuring out irrespective of whether or not a person really should safely board.”

Ahead of Torres became agitated and threatened these about him, fellow passenger Jason Loomis mentioned he didn’t exhibit any strange behavior in the course of boarding and was quiet for the starting of the flight. Hours later although, Loomis witnessed his outburst. Initially, he spoke with Torres to attempt to calm him down, but when Torres’ anger escalated, Loomis joined other passengers in restraining him.

Nevertheless, Loomis mentioned he couldn’t envision maintaining Torres off the flight in the initially spot. As an alternative, he mentioned it was a reminder that society requirements to take greater care of mentally ill folks.

“I know there has been a lot of speak about airplane safety and security these days, but this was a pretty uncommon occurrence,” Loomis mentioned. “It wasn’t like he was shouting in the airport. He wasn’t threatening something. He was completely fine and then a thing just snapped.”