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Neighbors Of Haisong Jiang, Man Arrested In Newark Airport Security Breach, Describe a Quiet, Studious Household
The window shades in the home of Haisong Jiang were drawn this morning, hours after Port Authority police took into custody the 28-year-old graduate student who breached security at Newark Liberty International Airport.
Jiang's Chevy Impala was not at the small, cream colored colonial-style house this morning, and its residents have not come out since Jiang was released at 12:14 a.m. Neighbors said the students who lived at the East Lincoln Avenue home caused little trouble in the community and tended to keep to themselves.
Next door, 16-year-resident Gene Wells, 53, said he has only seen students coming and going at the house, the only rental on the street.
"There are no parties or any disturbances over there,” Wells said. “I think there’s five or six of them in there...All they do is study and go to school.”
A native of China, Jiang is a graduate student at the Center for Advanced Biotechnology and Medicine, a joint research program run by Rutgers University and the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey. His studies are on Rutgers’ Busch campus in Piscataway.
"Once in a while, a female might stop by, perhaps one of their girlfriends," Wells said. “They don’t seem to be the kind of guys to just hang out.”
Every six months to a year, the faces change, he said. The houses in the neighborhood are about 20 years old, and the families are “mostly professional, mostly middle class,” Wells said.
Jeanette Frederick, a 62-year-old retired beautician, said as quiet as it was this morning, it’s always been like that in the 25 years that she’s lived on East Lincoln Avenue. Frederick said she didn’t know about the connection until she saw news accounts.
“Then I saw someone that I recognized,” she said of the young man. She last saw him about two months ago.
The breach unfolded Sunday evening, when the man slipped under a security ribbon inside Terminal C after a guard briefly left his post. He then entered an area where passengers had been screened. The woman, already in the secure area, greeted him at the ribbon, and after the two shared a kiss, they walked together past the guard’s desk. Authorities have said the man left the terminal about 20 minutes later, after the woman boarded her flight.
Friday night’s arrest concludes a turbulent week that exposed flaws in security at the airport, one of the nation’s busiest, and brought recriminations from a host of politicians and security experts.
Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.), who repeatedly blasted the lapse by the federal Transportation Security Administration, praised Port Authority police for tracking down the suspect and said he would seek to strengthen penalties for those involved in such breaches in the future.
| Video footage of the Newark Airport Security breach |
NJ Police Arrest Man In Newark Security Breach
A man believed to have breached security to bid his girlfriend goodbye, triggering the shutdown of a busy Newark Airport terminal that led to snarled flights worldwide, was arrested in New Jersey and faces a trespassing charge and a fine of up to $500, punishment a senator says should be much harsher.
Haisong Jiang, 28, of Piscataway was taken into custody at 7:30 p.m. Friday at his home, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey said. He was questioned at the airport by Port Authority police, who arrested him, and released shortly after midnight.
The Port Authority said in a statement that Jiang will being charged with defiant trespass, and that the charge was determined in coordination with the Essex County prosecutor and federal officials, though it's not a federal charge. A spokeswoman for the Transportation Security Administration referred all questions to the Port Authority.
Jiang is due to appear in Newark municipal court next week, according to Paul Loriquet of the Essex County Prosecutor's Office.
It was not immediately clear whether Jiang has retained a lawyer.
Good people
Jiang, who is Chinese, is a Doctoral student in a joint molecular Bio-Sciences program at Rutgers University, one of his roommates said early Saturday. He said Jiang was born in Jiangxi, China, and has been in the U.S. since 2004.
Jiang's roommate, who would only identify himself as Hui, said Jiang took his girlfriend to the airport Sunday. He said Jiang's girlfriend was a recent Rutgers graduate who lives in Los Angeles and was visiting for the holidays.
He said Jiang hadn't mentioned anything to his roommates about what happened at the airport and they were surprised by the arrest. He said he felt Jiang didn't think what he had done was a serious matter.
Hui said the roommates were aware of the video of the security breach but didn't pay much attention.
Jiang lives in two-story home on a residential street of tidy, single-family homes near the Rutgers campus in Piscataway. His roommate said Chinese graduate students from Rutgers lived in the house.
"From every indication I've seen, everybody in there is good people," said Gene Wells, who lives next door to Jiang. "I've never had a problem with them."
Hui said he arrived home about 7 p.m. Friday and two officers were waiting outside. He called Jiang, who he said was at the gym, and told him the officers were waiting. Jiang returned home, spoke to the officers and was arrested.
Sheer, hard Police work
New Jersey Sen. Frank Lautenberg, who was briefed on the arrest, said authorities found Jiang with "sheer, hard police work" of sifting through records and following leads. But he expressed anger that Jiang faces a charge he described as a "slap on the wrist" and will only be given a fine of about $500.
"This was a terrible deed in its outcome — it wasn't some prank that didn't do any harm — it did a lot of harm because it sent out an alert that people can get away with something like this," Lautenberg said.
The senator called Jiang's actions "premeditated" and said even though the his actions were relatively benign, "what he did was a terrible injustice" to the thousands of people who were inconvenienced.
Lautenberg, a New Jersey Democrat, had pressed for surveillance video of the security breach to be publicly released. He said he believes Newark airport is safe but will pursue airport security issues in upcoming Congressional hearings.
The breach led the TSA to shut down one of Newark Liberty International's three terminals for six hours Sunday, stranding thousands of passengers and contributing to long delays.
Source names TSA employee
A person with direct knowledge of the investigation told The Associated Press on Friday that the Transportation Security Administration worker who allegedly left his post is Ruben Hernandez of Newark. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation is in progress.
TSA employees are not unionized, but the American Federation of Government Employees is representing him, said union spokesman Derrick Thomas. The union declined to publicly identify him. The TSA has said the guard has been on administrative leave since Tuesday.
The officer, who has been with the agency for 2 1/2 years, previously received a commendation for job performance, Thomas said.
"He's been rated a model employee," he said. "We intend to fully represent him to make sure this whole investigation is handled correctly and that he's not made a scapegoat for all that's been going wrong with security at the airports."
The union is reviewing reports that the officer was called from his post to investigate a disturbance in the seconds before the security breach, Thomas said.
Ducking under Security rope
On a surveillance video released Thursday by the TSA and the Port Authority, the guard is seen sitting at a security podium in an exit lane as passengers stream past on their way out of the terminal.
A man wearing a light-colored jacket stands inside a rope barrier, and the guard approaches the man, apparently telling him to move behind the rope.
Within a minute, the guard leaves the podium again and disappears into the crowd. A woman in a long white coat approaches the podium from inside the terminal; the man sees her and ducks under the security rope, and the two walk past, arm in arm.
The man was seen on a separate surveillance camera leaving the terminal about 20 minutes later, according to the TSA.
A bystander waiting for an arriving passenger noticed the breach and told the guard. TSA officials then discovered that surveillance cameras at the security checkpoint had not recorded the breach and were forced to consult backup security cameras operated by Continental Airlines.
Continental spokeswoman Susannah Thurston said Friday night that the airline had no comment on Jiang's arrest.
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Sources: AP, NJ.com, MSNBC, Google Maps
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