An Appleton native spent hours stuck on the tarmac at the Fort Lauderdale airport after a shooting there Friday. Tara Mitchell flew in right after the shooting and was told their plane could not go to the gate.
Mitchell moved to Fort Lauderdale a few years ago from Wisconsin. She was flying home from a business trip Friday afternoon when she found out there was a shooting at the airport.
During her fourth hour of waiting on the American Airlines plane, an announcement came over the public address system.
"There's a lot of people focusing in on this airport. So you are not abandoned by any stretch of the imagination," the announcement said.
"They immediately told us on the loud speaker what was going on and that we couldn't get back into the airport. We couldn't go to the gate," said Mitchell.
Mitchell and her fellow passengers were left sitting at the end of the runaway, following what was going on through social media and looking out their plane windows.
"This is what we see right now. There's several squad cars, they have helicopters in the air," said Mitchell, through a FaceTime interview with our sister station in Milwaukee.
The public address from the crew updated the passengers.
