The feds charged a disgruntled ex-American Airlines employee Wednesday with threatening to reveal in-flight safety secrets to Islamic groups.Rodney Lorenzo authored two anonymous letters mailed from Queens to the airline's corporate headquarters last year claiming he sent information from the safety and security manual "to 25 Muslim charity organizations both here and in the U.K.," a criminal complaint unsealed in Brooklyn Federal Court says.
Lorenzo, a former flight attendant, has a grudge against the airline stemming from his dismissal for throwing a coffee pot at a fellow attendant during a flight, court papers charge.
"Karma will soon bite back and your aircraft will begin to fall from the sky like dead birds," Lorenzo wrote in the letter, which was enclosed in an envelope bearing the word "Boom!!" prosecutors say. He claims to have made "hundreds of copies" of the safety manual, FBI agent Michael Lewis stated in the complaint.
Lorenzo came under suspicion because he included threats in the letters against the employee he attacked, as well as enclosing photos of decapitated and mutilated women. Lorenzo was released on $50,000 bail. Defense lawyer Heidi Cesare could not immediately be reached for comment.