FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. -- Three days before carrying out the deadly mass shooting at Fort Lauderdale’s main airport, Esteban Santiago researched the layout of the Los Angeles international airport, prosecutors revealed Monday.
Santiago used his cellphone to look up a map of the LAX airport on Jan. 3, 2017, prosecutors wrote in court records. They did not elaborate on why Santiago traveled instead to South Florida.
That same day, Santiago purchased a one-way ticket on a Delta flight from Anchorage, Alaska, where he lived, to Fort Lauderdale, via Minneapolis. The flight departed on Jan. 5 and landed in Fort Lauderdale around lunchtime on Jan. 6.
Santiago, 28, is expected to plead guilty to multiple charges this week and will be sentenced to five life terms plus 120 years in federal prison, according to court records filed Monday.
He is scheduled for a change-of-plea hearing Wednesday in federal court and the sentencing will be scheduled in several weeks. Prosecutors have agreed to take the death penalty off the table in exchange for his guilty pleas to 11 charges linked to the Jan. 6, 2017, mass shooting at Fort Lauderdale’s international airport.
[As his life unraveled in Anchorage, Esteban Santiago slipped through all the cracks]
Santiago does not appear to have any significant assets but if he ever comes into any money, he must turn it over as restitution to the victims. The plea agreement includes any money paid to him, or anyone on his behalf, for “writing, interviews, documentaries, movies, or other information disclosed by the defendant, including, but not limited to access to the defendant, photographs or drawing of or by the defendant, or any other type of artifact or memorabilia.”
Five people died in the mass shooting: Mary Louise Amzibel, 69; Michael Oehme, 56; Olga Weltering, 84; Shirley Timmons, 70; and Terry Andres, 62.
And six people, who are only identified by their initials in court records, were seriously injured. Some of the injured were spouses of the murder victims.
Authorities also revealed new details about those injuries in Monday’s court filing.
“J.S. suffered a gunshot wound through her shoulder. B.G. suffered a gunshot wound through his left arm that resulted in a life-threatening arterial injury requiring emergency surgery in order to stem the bleeding and to transplant a vein from his leg in order to effect a repair of that artery,” prosecutors wrote in the plea agreement.
“C.S.T. suffered a gunshot wound to the head resulting in the loss of his left eye and the excision [removal] of part of his skull in order to remove damaged brain tissue. C.P. suffered a gunshot wound to his left wrist, requiring surgery to insert metal parts in order to reconstruct the bones in that wrist. K.K.O. suffered a gunshot wound to the neck, which lodged in her upper back, causing fractures to two vertebrae.”