US national held with live bullets on 18-09-2013

[karmveer]

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1130919/j ... 366091.jsp

Bhubaneswar, Sept. 18:
A 27-year-old US national was arrested at Biju Patnaik airport here today for carrying eight live bullets in his bag.

William M. Hurtubise, a mechanical engineer based in Houston, Texas, was about to board a private chopper to Paradip around 8.30am when Central Industrial Security Force jawans detained him after eight live bullets of .22mm calibre were found in his bag during scanning.

However, no gun was found in his possession. The US national was immediately handed over to police, who booked him under Section 25 of the Arms Act.

William, who claimed that he was going to Paradip for the inspection of a ship engine, said he possessed a licence for firearms and ammunition. The bullets, he said, were in his bag as he had forgotten to check it before leaving his country.

“I left the US on Sunday. I am supposed to stay here for 14 days. I have a licence for firearms and ammunition at my home. The bullets were in my bag, but I forgot to check it before leaving my country,” he said. However, he failed to produce his gun licence before the police.

Sources said William was working as a service engineer with STX Service, a US-based company engaged in manufacturing and servicing medium and slow speed diesel engines. Vantage Drilling, a foreign company, had contracted him to inspect a ship engine currently anchored off the Paradip coast.

“William had landed in Bhubaneswar from Delhi on Tuesday and spent the night at a hotel in Jayadev Vihar before leaving for the airport,” a senior police officer said.

The police officer said investigation was on to verify William’s claim that he had carried the bullets with him from the US. “He must had gone through security checks while boarding the flight from the US and Delhi,” he said.

The police are also investigating whether William had procured the bullets from Bhubaneswar. Bullets of .22mm calibre are available aplenty here and in other areas of the state.

“We have got in touch with the US embassy. We are investigating if he carried any arms,” said deputy commissioner of police Nitinjeet Singh.

An official of the Airports Authority of India said there was very little chance of the bullets escaping the X-ray scanner in Delhi, from where he flew to Bhubaneswar on Tuesday.

[tirpassion]

The .22mm caliber is very interesting . The journalist seems to know a lot about arms and ammunition.

[xl_target]

Why would a resident of the US purchase .22 LR cartridges in Bhubaneshwar, of all places, when he comes from the land of plenty?

The police officer said investigation was on to verify William’s claim that he had carried the bullets with him from the US. “He must had gone through security checks while boarding the flight from the US and Delhi,” he said.

Shows you how good these security checks are. Most of them are just feel-good security theater.

An official of the Airports Authority of India said there was very little chance of the bullets escaping the X-ray scanner in Delhi, from where he flew to Bhubaneswar on Tuesday.

Well apparently, Mr Airports Authority Official, your guys are too busy gossiping to look at the X-Ray scanner.

“I left the US on Sunday. I am supposed to stay here for 14 days. I have a licence for firearms and ammunition at my home. The bullets were in my bag, but I forgot to check it before leaving my country,” he said. However, he failed to produce his gun licence before the police.

Why would he carry a Texas gun license into India when it has no validity here? Why is the fact that he did not produce a Texas licence to the police even germane to this article?

[spin_drift]

As far as i know in Texas you do not need to license to own a firearm.

[FN-Five-Seven]

Seems like Mr Hurtubise is going to have an extended stay in the land of billion plus people .

[xl_target]

As far as i know in Texas you do not need to license to own a firearm.

You don't need a license in most places in the US to own a firearm but you need a licence to carry in public (in most states).

[bennedose]

LOL Every airline on earth has a warning against carrying any form of explosive. "I forgot to empty my bag" is as lame and excuse as a Heroin smuggler saying "Someone else has inserted this stuff in my bag when I was not looking".

If this guy has passed security at two airports it means that the bullets have appeared in the bag just before he went for the third check.

[xl_target]

If this guy has passed security at two airports it means that the bullets have appeared in the bag just before he went for the third check.

Eight cartridges? Why in the hell would anyone try to smuggle eight .22 LR cartridges? Especially when you come from the US, where you could by them by the truckload if you wanted to. Think about your statement above.

I'd be willing to bet that they were in the bag all along and were missed by every other security check.

On any given weekend, I have hundreds of cartridges of different calibers in my vehicle, in various bags or boxes. Sometimes I don't clean out my car after the weekend and they ride around till the next weekend. No one thinks anything about it. It's quite common here. If I didn't clean out a bag properly, I could be in the same situation as him.

[bennedose]

The guy is either stupid or a criminal.

[jonahpach]

Typical of indian security agencies making a mountain out of a mole hill! How dangerous are .22 cartridges to the airline without the gun anyway? Are they afraid that he would throw it at the pilots to hijack the plane?

[essdee1972]

He's simply careless. Just like I once entered an airport with a (thankfully cheap Chinese) multitool in my backpack - forgot to shift it to the large cases after a short hike!

As far as security checks go, they are infinitely variable, and so is the subjectivity of the person in front of the screen. In Mumbai, where there is a x-ray after you check in the baggage, they didn't stop me for a can of Zippo lighter fluid (the rules say flammable material is not allowed in cabin laggage - no word on checked in luggage). In Kolkata, where they have the old fashioned pre-check-in "big box" x-ray, the lady stopped me and confiscated the poor Zippo fluid . I am assuming Bhubaneswar has the old-fashioned box like Kolkata (never been there by 'plane, anyway!).

The security check x-rays meant for hand baggage never catches matchboxes, even in the pockets of the jackets you are supposed to take off and put in the tray alongwith your laptop!!!

This guy's bullets may simply have been overlooked in the earlier airports. Moreover, he would have been carrying the bag as hand baggage (since private choppers are not likely to have a luggage check in facility). The CISF guys on the hand baggage screening are generally more trained, more efficient, and less prone to gossiping than the airline people at the checked baggage screening.

Of course, 0.22 mm would have been too small for x ray operators to detect anyway

[nagarifle]

just careless, this can happen if you use same bags for range or oversea traveling. if the police had any sense they would treat this with some understanding once the motive if any been verified.

something like this happen once before with the yanks.

thats way we have to remove our cell from gameboy as we might use it to blow up airplanes, so why do the cabin crew give it back to you?
had to give away all my razor blades away in case i might cut my throat. on the plane they give me steel knives.

God help us

[ebenezer]

Happens quite often down South and the 'culprits' most of the time would be politicians, who mostly tender an apology, handover the bullets to the airport police and board the flight

[xl_target]

The guy is either stupid or a criminal.

You don't get to be a Tech Rep for an international company by being either stupid or criminal.
The guy is an engineer of some kind and is absent minded like most of them (me included )
Besides that, as Naga points out, there's not much you can do with cartridges and no gun.

What I'm trying to say is that having guns and ammunition here is like owning an umbrella. Most people don't give them much thought.
They are not prestige items, they are tools that can be used everyday.

Your continued insistence that he did this on purpose or that he had some nefarious intent tells me that you have a basic lack of understanding of the situation in his home country.
It also shows me that I am wasting my breath.

[AgentDoubleS]

Criminal- unlikely. I doubt a criminal would carry a few rounds of '.22mm'. And by any standards these are 'few'.

XL, I agree with you that it could happen to anyone. however, in normal circumstances paranoia around only bullets being carried could well be justified since seemingly usual parts of a firearms carried by different ppl could well be assembled within an airplane.