A 19-year-old high school student was arrested after he tried to pass through an Indianapolis International Airport security checkpoint while wearing a bulletproof vest and carrying a pellet gun Sunday night, police said.Carlos Delay, an Arsenal Technical High School senior, was escorting his wheelchair-bound mother to her flight when the items in his possession set off a metal detector, authorities said. Security personnel searched him and found the vest and the pellet gun, which authorities said looked like a 9 mm handgun.
"It's absolutely unnormal for an average citizen to come to the airport wearing a bulletproof vest and having a toy handgun, so to say," said Bill Reardon, chief of the airport's police department.Delay was arrested on a preliminary charge of disorderly conduct and released after spending an hour in a police lockup. Police said they don't believe Delay had any bad intentions.
Reardon said Delay told police he wanted to have some protection at the airport in case of terrorist threats. However, in an interview at his home Monday, Delay told 6News that he wasn't wearing the vest for any particular reason.
Delay said police asked him many times why he brought the items to the airport."I just kept saying the same thing: 'I just did it. (I) didn't think about it,' " Delay told 6News' Jeremy Brilliant. Delay said he had the vest because he wants to become a Marion County Sheriff's Department cadet, something for which he has attended initiation meetings.
Delay said he made a mistake, but he was surprised at being arrested. He said it hadn't occurred to him that he shouldn't have a bulletproof vest and a pellet gun at an airport."It never dawned on me at all," Delay said.Capt. Phil Burton, a Marion County Sheriff's Department spokesman, said the arrest was "not good" for someone who aspires to be a cadet."It's definitely not a step in the right direction, if you want to become a cadet and ultimately a police officer, to get arrested for anything," Burton said.
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