Aptos man identified as driver who rammed through gate at Oakland airport

UPDATE: 9/3/19 11:30 a.m. The Alameda County Sheriff’s Office has released the identity of the man suspected of ramming through the gates at the Oakland International Airport. The Alameda County Coroner’s Bureau identifies the man as 42-year-old Brian Hirano of Aptos.

KION’s sister station in San Francisco reports that the man breached the gates at the airport and drove onto the runway before running from deputies Sunday afternoon. They also said the truck he drove was registered out of Santa Cruz County.

KPIX reports that authorities told them the incident started when a deputy tried to stop the Chevy pickup truck. They said Hirano sped onto an airport access road, rammed through the gates at more than 50 mph and drove a half-mile onto the runway.

The Alameda County Sheriff’s Office said in a social media post that it is believed he jumped into the bay by the airport. Deputies searched for him with dogs, boats, helicopters and drones, but they said it is possible he may have drowned.

A body was recovered from the bay on Monday near the opening of the Oakland estuary. Investigators are working to find out if it is the suspect from Sunday’s incident.

Deputies are trying to find out what the driver’s motive was after finding camouflage clothing, masks and a replica airsoft gun in the truck.

The Sheriff’s Office said operations are back to normal at the airport and there is no active threat to air traffic.

{“url”:”https://twitter.com/ACSOSheriffs/status/1168305989650542592″,”author_name”:”Alameda County Sheriff”,”author_url”:”https://twitter.com/ACSOSheriffs”,”html”:”&#lt;blockquote class=”twitter-tweet”&#gt;&#lt;p lang=”en” dir=”ltr”&#gt;It appears the suspect made it into the bay from the N/W corner of the airport. We searched with dogs, boats, helicopters and drones. We will continue throughout the night. It’s possible suspect drowned. We will update when more info comes in. Airport operations back to normal. &#lt;a href=”https://t.co/SXBpa4CHHJ”&#gt;https://t.co/SXBpa4CHHJ&#lt;/a&#gt;&#lt;/p&#gt;– Alameda County Sheriff (@ACSOSheriffs) &#lt;a href=”https://twitter.com/ACSOSheriffs/status/1168305989650542592?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”&#gt;September 1, 2019&#lt;/a&#gt;&#lt;/blockquote&#gt;n&#lt;script async src=”https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js” charset=”utf-8″&#gt;&#lt;/script&#gt;n”,”width”:550,”height”:null,”type”:”rich”,”cache_age”:”3153600000″,”provider_name”:”Twitter”,”provider_url”:”https://twitter.com”,”version”:”1.0″}