Tom Hanks, is that you?
Bizarre news has today emerged that a 36-year-old man has been living undetected in a secure part of Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport for almost three months. Sources say that a man named Aditya Singh is being charged with trespassing while Singh himself claims that he was too afraid of Covid-19 to return to his home state of California.
According to police, he arrived in Chicago just under three months ago on a flight from Los Angeles that landed at O’Hare International Airport on 19 October 2020. Since then Aditya Singh has been living off spare food that he has managed to source from other passengers in the airport. It hasn’t been made clear why Singh was in Chicago but it has been confirmed that he is an unemployed citizen of California with a master’s degree and residence in Orange, Los Angeles.
A California man who told police that he was afraid to fly because of the coronavirus pandemic has been arrested on charges that he hid for three months in a secured area at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport. https://t.co/dEdCJRFOcx
— The Associated Press (@AP) January 18, 2021
On Saturday, January 16, two employees from United Airlines reportedly approached Aditya Singh, after 92 days of hanging around the airport, and asked for his identification. Singh allegedly showed them a lost airport ID badge that had been reported missing by an airport operations manager, on 26 October with which he had been accessing various unauthorized secure sections of O’Hare airport.
Though Singh does not have a criminal background and had been offered food from other passengers, he has since been charged with trespassing in a restricted area of the airport as well as misdemeanor theft. Cook County Judge Susana Ortiz was as surprised as the rest of us when a prosecutor set out the allegations and apparently told the court: “You’re telling me that an unauthorized, non-employee individual was allegedly living within a secure part of the O’Hare airport terminal from 10 October 2020, to 16 January 2021, and was not detected? I want to understand you correctly.”
A man was found to be living inside of Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport for three months (!)
The judge’s reaction: https://t.co/YEoTEVyHcb pic.twitter.com/hsiEL4fjK5
— philip lewis (@Phil_Lewis_) January 18, 2021
Ortiz ruled that “based upon the need for airports to be absolutely secure so that people feel safe to travel, I do find those alleged actions do make him a danger to the community” and Singh’s bail has been set at $1,000. The Chicago Department of Aviation’s statement read: “CDA has no higher priority than the safety and security of our airports, which is maintained by a coordinated and multilayered law enforcement network.