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2002 Los Angeles International Airport shooting

Terrorist attack at the airline ticket counter of Israel's El Al

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJul 13, 2026
Entity authorityQ4600237 ↗
Source-derived summary

On July 4, 2002, a mass shooting occurred at Los Angeles International Airport in Los Angeles, California, United States. In the attack, 41-year-old Hesham Mohamed Hadayet killed two people and wounded four at the ticket counter of El Al, Israel's national airline, before being fatally shot by an El Al security guard.

Attack

On July 4, 2002, at around 11:30 a.m., Hadayet approached the El Al ticket counter inside the Tom Bradley International Terminal at the Los Angeles International Airport, pulled out two Glock pistols and started shooting at the 90 passengers standing in the line. Initially, Hadayet killed 25-year-old Customer Service Agent Victoria Hen, standing behind the counter, with a gunshot to the chest. Hadayet opened fire at the passengers as they huddled nearby and killed 46-year-old bystander Yaakov Aminov with a shot to the abdomen. In addition, he injured four other bystanders.

The gunman used a .45 caliber handgun in the shooting. In addition, he had a 9mm handgun, a 6-inch knife and additional loaded magazines for both guns.

After the gunman fired ten bullets at the crowd, one of El Al's security guards, who was unarmed, managed to knock him down. Meanwhile, El Al's security officer, Chaim Sapir, ran to the scene but was stabbed by the assailant with a knife.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “2002 Los Angeles International Airport shooting” as terrorist attack at the airline ticket counter of Israel's El Al. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Angeles, International and Airport.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2002—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Angeles, International and Airport providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “2002 Los Angeles International Airport shooting”, the useful work is to connect “terrorist attack at the airline ticket counter of Israel's El Al” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 13, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4600237. Authority coordinates are 33.942, -118.414. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2002.

Critical limits

Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

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Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “2002 Los Angeles International Airport shooting” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.