Man Killed After Breaching Perimeter at Denver International Airport

In less than three minutes, a 41-year-old man exploited a security gap at Denver International Airport and stepped onto a runway in the path of a jet carrying 231 people. The man slipped past motion detectors in a remote area of the airport, which covers an area twice the size of Manhattan.

He scaled an 8-foot perimeter fence topped with barbed wire and walked onto the runway where he was fatally struck by the aircraft late Friday. Surveillance video showed the man being pulled into an aircraft engine that burst into flames. The pilot stopped the aircraft that was traveling 150 miles per hour and evacuated the 224 passengers and seven crew members.

Twelve people sustained minor injuries. The Denver medical examiner ruled the intruder's death a suicide. Officials from the city-owned airport promised a review of their protocols. They defended the perimeter security program and said it received perfect scores during federal inspections.

During the breach an alarm from a ground detection sensor was triggered shortly before the man entered the airport along its eastern boundary about 2 miles from the terminal. An airport worker watching video surveillance cameras attributed the alarm to a herd of deer and missed the intruder.

It took the man about 15 seconds to scale the fence and two minutes more to reach the runway according to airport officials. Airport officials did not know the man was on the runway until the pilot notified the control tower that the plane had hit somebody.

The airport is surrounded by about 36 miles of fence which officials say is patrolled by security workers and continuously inspected.

Aviation and risk experts described the event as a clear security failure. One law professor stated "People ought to be concerned. This was really an unprecedented risk. " He added that having somebody damage a plane is concerning because of all the lives aboard any given aircraft and that new measures ought to be put into place.

Some aviation experts disagreed that new regulations were needed. They said installing blanket surveillance or impregnable defenses around airports was cost prohibitive given the relative rarity of such events. Airport perimeter breaches occur regularly with perhaps dozens annually nationwide according to a security expert who managed security at the airport in the 1990s.

The vast majority of airport trespassers do not pose a real threat to others that expert said. A similar incident occurred at the Austin airport in 2020 when a man died after being struck by a jet on a runway and police ruled it a suicide. Two law firms notified Denver officials Tuesday that they intend to sue on behalf of the passengers seeking in excess of $10 million in damages.

The firms alleged multiple failures in the airport perimeter security system but did not provide specifics. Former officials with the Federal Aviation Administration and National Transportation Safety Board offered differing assessments on whether broader changes to perimeter security are warranted.