Passenger May Have Had Panic Attack

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MIAMI (AP) - A passenger accused of trying to break into an airliner cockpit
during a flight to Argentina had been depressed and may have suffered a
panic attack, according to relatives and a psychiatrist who treated the man
during the flight.

Pablo Moreira Mosca, 29, a bank employee from Uruguay, was arrested Thursday
on a United Airlines flight from Miami to Buenos Aires with 157 people on
board.

He allegedly crashed into a reinforced cockpit door, getting his upper body
into the cockpit, before a crew member hit him with the blunt end of an ax
and fellow passengers helped subdue him.

Dr. Maria del Carmen Pirez Vargas, an Uruguayan psychiatrist on the flight,
told The Miami Herald she treated Moreira with an anti-anxiety drug.


"At the moment of the incident, the patient broke with reality and with the
present," Pirez wrote in a medical report she gave to the newspaper. "He
experienced a clastic crisis (mental breakdown), with aggressiveness and a
great lack of control."

Pirez quoted another passenger who had just attended a marketing seminar
with Moreira as saying: "Pablo was under great stress just prior to the
flight. He was in a state of shock for 24 hours before boarding the plane."
The passenger said Moriera seemed depressed "because he spent a whole day
without saying a word."

Moreira's sister, Montevideo journalist Gimena Moreira, told the Herald that
his boss had asked their brother to meet Moreira when the flight reached
Buenos Aires.

Gimena Moreira said her brother "gets panicky when he flies, especially when
there is turbulence."

She recalled an earlier trip when they were traveling together and their
plane flew through turbulence: "Pablo gripped the arm rests so hard that
they came off."

Moreira was unconscious and bleeding from a scalp wound when Pirez reached
him during Thursday's flight. She said she gave him the anti-anxiety
medication Loxitane. As Moreira gained more awareness, he told her he worked
at a Montevideo bank and had been married for two years, she said.

Other family members said Moreira's outburst was completely out of
character, describing him as a mature and intelligent person who tutored
students and enjoyed playing soccer.

"Pablo is an excellent person," Maria Balsa, Moreira's sister-in-law, told
the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. "He is an absolutely normal person."

Moreira was returned to Miami on Friday to face federal charges of
interfering with a flight crew. If convicted, he could face up to 20 years
in prison and a $250,000 fine. A bail hearing was scheduled for Tuesday.

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