Cleveland Hopkins has dealt with perimeter breaches before, but nothing like the Nov. 23 incident when a 26-year-old Army veteran disabled a radar and halted incoming and outgoing traffic.
NEW!CLEVELAND, Ohio – On the busy travel day before Thanksgiving, Isaac Woolley drove to the main radar tower at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport, disabled a gate, deactivated the radar’s main power source, climbed eight flights of stairs, shut off a second power source and pulled several wires from the radar, rendering it inoperable, according to federal court records.
Jeff Price, a national expert on aviation security, said as criminals have been thwarted in their efforts to access aircraft from the inside, they will look for other opportunities. The investigation was triggered by an incident in 2014 when a 15-year-old boy climbed a fence at Mineta San Jose International Airport in California and scrambled into a jet’s wheel well. He wasn’t discovered until he emerged after the plane landed in Hawaii.
The incident in 2019 involved a drunken driver who was on the airfield for nearly 3 minutes before exiting; in that case, a perimeter gate was left open for hours after the accident. The 2020 incident involved a driver who said he was swerving to miss a deer, according to media reports. The incident was not discovered by the city until nearly two hours later.
The airport property, which encompasses approximately 1,700 acres in the southwest corner of the city, is surrounded by chain-link fence -- 8 feet tall in some areas, 10 feet in others – topped by three strands of barbed wire. “With city streets all around us, we need to make sure that cars, whether by accident or purpose, can’t make it through the fence,” said Hatfield, who also noted that the airport has had several fence jumpers in recent years.
A spokesman for the airport noted that even prior to the recent security upgrades, the facility was fully compliant with federal regulations regarding perimeter security.
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