LEOMINSTER, Mass. — 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 individuals to come outdoors the shop and shoot him with an automatic weapon stored in his auto trunk. Just before any person could make sense of the request, Torres fled the shop and drove off. They in no way saw a weapon and he did not 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 buddies at the shop and noted that an employee known as 911, ushered young children into the back and shut down the shop. “I was spooked.”

The incident took location about a week just before 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 due to the fact 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 individuals and promises a bloodbath just before 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 did not return a contact Thursday in search of more 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 due to the fact 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 getting 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 transform, according to a police report. On yet another occasion in 2021, police responded to a contact 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 particular device providing him “super sonic hearing,” which he applied to listen to his neighbors speaking about him.

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

Regardless of repeated run-ins with police, authorities mentioned that he hardly ever acted violent. He when was accused of grabbing his mother’s arm, but these charges had been dismissed. He did not legally personal a weapon, even even though he frequently talked about guns. And there had been no indicators of problems when he boarded that cross-county flight final month, a passenger mentioned, or in the course of the very first 5 hours in the air.

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

And even if previous incidents raised red flags, authorities mentioned there is not a complete lot that airline businesses can or must be undertaking. Airlines say they do not share banned passenger lists with every other, even though there have been a handful of situations so notorious that the passenger’s name became broadly recognized.

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

People today with mental illnesses are not prohibited from having on a plane, according to Jeffrey Cost, an aviation-safety professional at Metropolitan State University of Denver. Federal law offers U.S. citizens “a public appropriate 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 build a new no-fly list which includes individuals who had been charged or fined for interfering with airline crews. The bills died devoid of hearings in the Senate or Residence, but backers strategy to re-introduce them later this month.

Many Republican senators opposed the proposal, saying it could be applied 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, even though the federal mask mandate was nonetheless in impact, the vast majority of unruly-passenger situations 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 individuals suspected of terrorism is opaque and unfair.

The American Civil Liberties Union has sued the government many instances more than the final decade on behalf of individuals who did not know why they had been on the list or how to be removed from it. The ACLU also has accused the FBI of placing some individuals on the list to stress them to develop into informants in counter-terrorist investigations against Muslim communities in the U.S.

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

The government runs what it calls “trusted traveler” applications such as TSA PreCheck, which lets individuals who are fingerprinted and pass a background verify speed by means of safety devoid of removing footwear, belts, jackets and laptops from their bags. People today can be denied PreCheck for particular crimes, which extends to these who are identified not guilty by purpose of insanity. But of course individuals 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 queries. 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 info private by following strict HIPAA guidelines.

Plus, possessing 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 whether or not or not an individual must safely board.”

Just before Torres became agitated and threatened these about him, fellow passenger Jason Loomis mentioned he did not exhibit any strange behavior in the course of boarding and was quiet for the starting of the flight. Hours later even though, 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 could not envision maintaining Torres off the flight in the very first location. Alternatively, he mentioned it was a reminder that society demands to take far better care of mentally ill individuals.

“I know there has been a lot of speak about airplane safety and security these days, but this was a incredibly 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 some thing just snapped.”