A flight attendant with a short fuse threatened to unleash jihad on American Airlines after it fired him for hurling a coffee pot at a stewardess, the feds charged yesterday.
Rodney Lorenzo, 45, mailed letters to top airline executives with “Boom!!” written on the envelopes, a prosecutor said in Brooklyn federal court. They contained pages from an employee handbook showing how to access the cockpit.
In the 2008 letters, Lorenzo — who faces charges of making terroristic threats — allegedly said he would forward the information to Islamic groups in the hope they would use it against the airline and its passengers.
After he was sacked for throwing the coffee pot, Lorenzo allegedly sent threats to the stewardess, for which he spent 41 days in a Maryland jail.
Then, the feds said, he unleashed his terror campaign on the executives.
When authorities matched the writing on the letters the executives got to those sent to the flight attendant, charges were filed in Brooklyn.
Lorenzo claimed that he threw the coffee pot because he was upset over a friend’s attempted suicide and that he’d been aiming at a door. The stewardess was not hit. Lorenzo was freed on $50,000 bond posted by a man he described as his boyfriend.
Airline spokesman Tim Smith said, “We do take seriously any type of threat to our people and the security of our company and aircraft.”