NASHVILLE, Tenn. – A Tennessee physician accused of making a bomb threat because he missed his Northwest Airlines flight out of Seattle had no history of problems while studying and practicing in the state, officials said.
Kou Wei Chiu, 31, of the Bellevue suburb of Nashville, was arrested Wednesday at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport after authorities said he called in a false threat against the flight to Memphis.
The plane was forced to turn around in mid-flight and was brought back to the gate and grounded for several hours while authorities determined the threat to be a hoax. Northwest estimated that it lost $70,000 in fuel, gate fees and other expenses.
According to an FBI affidavit filed in support of the complaint, Chiu admitted that he used an airport pay phone to call 911 three times after he arrived at Gate S-7 too late to board his flight Wednesday. “Flight 980 Memphis. There may be a bomb on board,” Chiu was quoted as telling the emergency operator.
A federal magistrate judge in Seattle on Friday ordered that he remain in custody until a hearing Monday. By then, his attorneys were expected to turn over his passport, provide details of how he would travel back to Tennessee if he is released pending trial, and determine whether a counseling program would be available to him.
Chiu was in Seattle attending a family medicine conference, said John Howser, a spokesman for Vanderbilt University Medical Center, where Chiu attends school.
After getting his medical degree from Vanderbilt University in 2003, Chiu returned to get a master’s in biomedical informatics and was working at a family clinic in Nashville.
Fluent in Chinese and Spanish, Chiu worked at Medicos Para La Familia, but an office manager at the clinic said she had no comment about Chiu. He also worked at a family medicine residence facility in Newport News, Va., between 2003 and 2006.
Howser said the medical center had no problems with Chiu while he was there and he was not with anyone from the hospital at the time of his arrest.
“His status as a student will remain unchanged pending the outcome of the legal proceedings,” Howser said.
The state Department of Health has no records of disciplinary actions or violations against him since he has been practicing in the state.
Chiu also told investigators that he had been off his antidepressant medication in recent days, according to his affidavit.
There is no phone number for Chiu listed in Tennessee and his family couldn’t be located for comment.
John Beifuss, a reporter for The Commercial Appeal newspaper in Memphis, was a passenger aboard the plane and wrote about the experience in a first-person story in Friday’s edition. Beifuss said the pilot announced the plane was returning to Seattle because of a “security” concern.
“Thankfully, the pilot did not announce there might be a bomb on the plane, which would have been about as calming as when that viper popped out of that oxygen mask in ‘Snakes on a Plane,’” Beifuss wrote.
Beifuss said most passengers were unaware of the threat until several hours later when they were allowed to use their cell phones and learned of news reports about the bomb threat.
Northwest gave passengers food vouchers and, when they were boarded on another flight to Memphis five hours later than the original departure, offered each adult a free drink, Beifuss said.
“Everybody cheered, which goes to show that people will forgive a lot of hardship in exchange for some free booze,” Beifuss wrote.
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