On Friday, Nov. 1, Paul Ciancia shot three TSA agents, mortally wounding Gerardo Hernandez at Los Angeles International Airport. Amidst the mayhem was an airline worker, who wished to remain anonymous for this interview.

He described his frightening morning:

“I happened to be working the morning shift. I had my airplane assigned to me at a certain gate. I went out there and noticed that there was people there, but then I did a second take because the people were actually flying out of the door running and both of the doors were open. So I started running too.”

Ciancia began shooting at around 9:20am.

“I noticed some of the TSA agents were in tears. I knew something wasn’t right, but at first I thought it was a fire.”

He quickly learned that he was, in fact, in the middle of a public shooting.

“We got into our company car and drove away so that we could still see what was going on … [and] listened to the news on the radio.”

Luckily, none of his coworkers were injured during the incident.

“The scary thing is sometimes in the morning, we’ll go up there into the terminal at the same Burger King where the shooting happened. Thank God nobody was up there at that moment.”

The witness never actually saw the gunman or heard shots fired, though he commented, “Yeah, it was scary.”

Ciancia, 23, is charged with the murder of a federal officer and commission of violence in an international airport. He was in critical condition at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center on Sunday and was unable to speak to investigators.

Reach Staff Reporter Sarah Collins here.