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5 dead, 8 hospitalized from shooting at Ft. Lauderdale International airport


Courtesy WPLG 10 Miami, FL

At approximately 1:00 PM EST, what appears to be a lone shooter wearing a Star Wars T-shirt opened fire at a baggage carousel at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport on Friday, killing at least five people before being taken into custody, officials and witnesses said.

Five people died and eight more were wounded in the incident and taken to area hospitals according to the Broward County Sheriff’s office.

The shooter, who said nothing, appeared to be "a man in his 20s wearing a Star Wars T-shirt who was shot by police as he attempted to reload possibly as many as three times", according to an on phone witness to Fox News’s Shepherd Smith.

At 2:30 PM the TSA was reporting a second shooter but the FBI later down played that report saying it could not be confirmed.

The ATF was responding to the scene. Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson was monitoring the shooting and getting regular updates -- part of standard practice, a federal law enforcement source told Fox News.

The airport is the 21st busiest in the United States and serves 21 different airlines. Nearly 2.5 million people passed through the airport in November, according to a county government report.

There was and is much panic and confusion with no certainty as to the disposition of the current situation or hundreds of passengers scrambled in and out of Terminal one and two.

In a correction to previous reports, the shooter was identified as twenty six year old Esteban Santiago that came into Ft. Lauderdale on a Delta connected Air Canada flight which initiated in Anchorage, Alaska.

This is an ongoing situation which both law enforcement and media sources are trying to interpret.

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