Airport security got alert on CdA shooting suspect after he flew out
Kyle Odom, suspected of shooting a Coeur d’Alene pastor Sunday afternoon, drove through Spokane and then south to Boise where he boarded a commercial flight bound for Washington, D.C., on Monday morning – walking right through airport security hours before police bulletins reached federal agents.
Odom was screened through the security checkpoint, according to TSA sources. Agents did not detain him and summon police because they had not yet received alerts to “ be on the lookout.” That bulletin reached the agency in charge of airport security Monday evening.
The TSA screens passengers to see if they are on the government’s consolidated Terrorist Watchlist – a collection of names and information maintained by the FBI’s Terrorist Screening Center. Generally, the TSA does not screen passengers on local-level criminal warrants.
U.S. Secret Service agents arrested Odom on Tuesday evening after he allegedly threw flash drives and other materials over the south fence of the White House. He was not armed.
The arrest capped a multistate manhunt for a man police described as mentally ill and dangerous following the shooting of Altar Church pastor Tim Remington.
Odom appeared in a Washington, D.C., court Wednesday. He is being held without bond and is scheduled for an extradition hearing on April 6. He faces attempted murder charges in Kootenai County.
“It’s my understanding that there aren’t going to be any charges arising from his conduct in the District of Columbia, and so the hearing today would have been focusing on his extradition and whether he wanted to contest that or waive that,” Kootenai County Prosecuting Attorney Barry McHugh said Wednesday.
The investigation is continuing. “There’s a lot of work left to be done,” McHugh said.
Remington remains hospitalized at Kootenai Health, where he is recovering from six gunshot wounds.
Odom, a former Marine and University of Idaho graduate, mailed letters and electronic documents to his parents and several media outlets. Odom claimed Remington was a “Martian” and a member of “an ancient civilization from Mars.”
Police released the documents Wednesday, with some “sensitive information” redacted. Some of the writing is sexually graphic in nature, investigators said.
Police have not released church surveillance footage of Sunday’s shooting.
Odom also had targeted John Padula, outreach pastor at Altar Church, on Sunday, and the attack was planned, police said Tuesday. Police assigned two officers to keep watch over Padula and his family until Odom was in custody.