The article notes that 'He and his wife had arrived earlier in the day on a flight from Quito, Ecuador, after a working holiday as church missionaries'. Now I don't know how long of a period they were there, but it is quite likely that he might have ran out of his prescription while there.

Additionally, it's quite possible that he might have become homesick after spending a long time there, and in combination with being off the meds (which leads him to hopping around in a plane) + accent (which can make I want to go home, sound like I have a bomb), you can see where this is going.

Frankly, I don't blame the Air Marshalls for what they did. They have a set protocol, and if they had acted slower and some other passenger had gotten hurt, they would have gotten a lot of flak, fired, sued etc. However, I really wish they would invest all the time and effort into screening checked luggage, instead of sniping about scissors and box cutters.

Who honestly thinks that any terrorist or madman who jumps up in a plane with a sharp object is not going to get bumrushed by 50 passengers?

...because they were ordered to do so at gunpoint. As with most things complex, the picture becomes less clear with mounting information.

Some on board claim that Alzipar never said anything about a bomb. But - An unholstered sidearm, with desperate hollering, and cold-blooded killing, tend to affect witnesses' memories. The Air Marshal gets the benefit of the doubt. We don't want Air Marshals to hesitate. But maybe they need better training.

The plane was en route from Colombia and probably had a lot of brown people on board. After the perceived (if not stated) bomb threat and Alzipar's tragic death, the Air Marshal probably thought about Jose Padilla and realized he couldn't trust anyone on that plane.

Then he buried his warm pistol in the faces of scared passengers, ordering them off the plane, hands on their heads. Those are the accounts that will be surfacing very soon.

Tray-tables can be snapped into strong, sharp pieces.

I am a firm believer in protecting our civil liberties-- nevertheless I fail to see how being allowed to bring any and all sharp objects aboard a common carrier like an airplane is a civil liberty; a nail clipper is one thing, a boxcutter or a metal screwdriver quite another.

You say, "if the September 11th terrorists had been unable to bring boxcutters aboard, they would have fashioned weapons from something else."

Ok, like what?

Would Mohammed Atta have gotten into the cockpit with a necktie and a spork?

Wouldn't it be just slightly ironic if the next terrorist plot involved a husband and wife team in which the husband acts erratically and runs towards the cockpit, the air marshals take notice and immediately begin their protective countermeasure procedures, and the wife, in an act of desparation, screams loudly that her husband is bipolar and is acting the way he is because he hasn't taken his medication?

The air marshals, after hearing the pleas of mercy from the exasperated wife, along with all 98 passengers onboard, are torn to shreds by the 6.5 lbs. of Semtex the husband detonates in his suitcase bomb, the extra time bought by his wife enough to allow him to press the button.

Given the sequence of events, these air marshals were justified in their actions. Why didn't the wife make sure her husband was indeed medicated if she knew he was bipolar? Given the possibility that someone in his condition could act the way he did, isn't the responsibility on her to make sure he is in a mentally stable state of mind before flying on an airplane in today's political climate?

She should be ashamed for allowing the burden of a life and death split-second decision to fall on the shoulders of the air marshals charged to protect the safety of all onboard. She failed, and, unfortunately, paid dearly for her oversight.

My wife is diabetic and I have never let her go anywhere without the proper medication at our disposal.

Speaking as a diagnosed bipolar patient (rapid cycling with severe psychotic features when untreated), this guy was in dire straits before he boarded the plane. It was obvious not only to his wife but to surrounding witnesses that he was highly agitated, appeared delusional, and was singing spirituals. He was psychotic while he was boarding.

While I agree that deadly force may not have been necessary, the truth is that Alpizar and his wife are partially responsible for the situation. Let me explain.

Bipolar disorder is not about "moodswings". It is a deadly serious brain disorder. Everyone who has been correctly diagnosed as bipolar has had at least one severe manic episode - you cannot receive a diagnosis without a manic episode, and more often than not, a manic episode has psychotic features. It seems to me that Alpizar has three strikes against him: he had a definitive diagnosis of bipolar disorder; he was off his medicine; and his wife didn't get him straight to a hospital.

If he was diabetic, you can be sure he'd have had his insulin on hand. If he was prone to cardiac events or even high blood pressure, it's likely he'd either be on continuous medication or else in the hospital. It is finally the patient's own responsibility to take charge of his or her own treatment, and the second line of defense lies with family members who understand the illness.

This case speaks to me less about the state of airline security and much more about the state of mental health care and awareness in this country. Far too many bipolars have the mistaken belief that their illness is minor. A subset of those believe that their illness is "cured" once they are stabilized on the correct medications. The truth is that bipolar disorder is incurable; only the symptoms can be ameliorated. Fully fifty percent of diagnosed bipolars are non-compliant with their medication regimen, and that is an unacceptable number.

It's a terribly vicious cycle. Bipolar patient gets put on good medicine - bipolar patient feels cured - bipolar patient goes off meds - bipolar patient slowly succumbs to an inevitable relapse, which causes a profound erosion of insight and judgement. A psychotic person generally isn't capable of reasoned, rational response. A rational response for someone with a heart problem would be, "Oops, I just had a major palpitation; I should get that looked at or get back on my medicine as soon as I can." But someone who has slipped into severe mania or psychosis doesn't have that ability. They lose their mental capacity to understand the severity of their own mental state.

It was obvious that his wife knew how sick he was. Even if there had been some unlikely extenuating circumstance that had prevented her husband from taking his meds, the responsibility was on her to either get him to a hospital for immediate treatment or at least to tell flight personnel about her husband's mental state. Ideally, he never should have flown at all in his delusional state.

It makes me very angry that so few people take this illness seriously. I can't tell you the number of times people have downplayed my own struggle with bipolar disorder with the refrain of "just snap out of it" or something equally dismissive. The truth is that most untreated bipolars only wind up hurting themselves; the suicide rate for those that refuse medication is outrageously high. (Just try to find an insurance company that will admit a pre-exisiting bipolar diagnosis.) For that reason, bipolar disorder has a mortality rate higher than most forms of cancer. But psychosis is tricky, and psychotic people do sometimes hurt other people, most often their own children or beloved family members. And yet it is still treated as a simple annoyance or minor impediment by most health care providers and most patients.

The real story here is yet another tragic instance of severe, debilitating mental illness being treated as a head cold.