A 41-year-old man scaled a perimeter fence at Denver International Airport on May 8 and walked onto an active runway, where he was hit and killed by a departing Frontier Airlines jet carrying 231 people. He died by suicide, according to the Denver Office of the Medical Examiner.
Sterling McLaren, Denver’s chief medical examiner, said the manner of death was determined through an on-scene investigation, a records review, and a postmortem examination. McLaren called it “a purposeful act with a foreseeable fatal outcome.” No suicide note was found, though investigators said the classification was based on the totality of the evidence gathered.
The man crossed roughly 650 feet from the fence line to the runway before the plane—traveling at about 150 mph during its takeoff roll—hit him with its right engine, which then erupted in flames. Frontier Airlines Flight 4345 had been bound for Los Angeles International Airport with 224 passengers and seven crew members aboard.
A ground-based radar system activated in the area shortly before the man jumped the fence, setting off an alert. An airport worker reviewed a surveillance camera feed—but spotted a herd of deer nearby and assumed the alarm was wildlife-related.
“The camera view was alternating between the wildlife and the individual. There are some ditches in the area, so the person was out of view for a bit as well,” airport CEO Phillip Washington said Tuesday.
Washington said it was federal officials—not airport workers—who ultimately notified the airport about the intruder. By that point, the window to intervene had closed. The remote location, roughly two miles from the terminal, combined with how quickly the man moved from the fence to the runway, left airport workers without enough time to act.
Surveillance video released by the airport captures the sequence of events from a distance: a figure walking toward the runway, arms swinging at his sides. He crosses onto the tarmac at a slight angle. Seconds later, a plane rockets past, striking the man with its engine, which immediately bursts into fire.
Passengers Were Screaming and Crying
“Honestly, I thought I was going to die,” passenger Mohamed Hassan told Colorado’s 9NEWS. “A lot of people next to me were screaming and crying. I just closed my eyes.”
Passenger Nikil Thalanki said he felt “this jerk” just as the plane seemed to lift off before slamming back down. “There was fire on the engine. There was lots of sparks that are happening. Immediately came to a stop,” he said. “As soon as we saw the sparks on the flight, smoke filled the cabin completely. It was super hard to breathe.”
Passengers were evacuated through emergency slides onto the tarmac. Twelve people sustained minor injuries and five were taken to area hospitals, though four have since been released, Washington said. Some passengers expressed concern about being left outside in the cold, and video footage showed certain travelers leaving the plane with carry-on bags.
The National Transportation Safety Board said on May 10 that it is gathering information about the evacuation to determine whether it meets the criteria for a formal safety investigation, which would be triggered if injuries meet the agency’s definition of “serious.”
Denver International Airport is a massive target—spanning 53 square miles, roughly twice the size of Manhattan, on the open prairie northeast of the city. Its perimeter runs approximately 36 miles of fence, which airport officials say is continuously inspected.
But security expert Jeff Price, who served as assistant director of security at Denver International in the 1990s, said that doesn’t make it impenetrable.
“It’s really not that difficult to jump an airport perimeter fence,” Price said. “They meet the standards for TSA, but the standards are not that robust.”
Perimeter fences at major airports are typically 6 to 8 feet tall with barbed wire at the top, Price said, though no uniform construction standards exist beyond federal approval. Intrusion detection systems—including cameras and motion sensors—compose the fencing at major airports, Price said, adding that some systems detect the seismic impact of people dropping to the ground.
Still, trespassers breach airport fences dozens of times per year nationally, according to Price, with most being intoxicated or simply testing whether they could do it. Denver, he noted, also periodically attracts individuals who are convinced that the airport conceals a UFO base.
Denver police Chief Ron Thomas said detectives are reaching out to the man’s family and associates to better understand what drove him to the airport that night.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
