After living undetected in a secure area inside Chicago International airport for three months, 36 year old Aditya Singh was arrested on Saturday. Due to fear of flying during the pandemic, Singh who lives in Los Angeles had flown to O’ Hare international airport on October 19th and was arrested on January 16th after airline staff asked him to produce his identification.
Singh pointed to a badge of an operations manager who went missing in October. The 36 year old man who has no criminal record says he found the badge in the airport and was using it since then. US investigators are trying to find out what led the man to land in Chicago. The man says he was scared of COVID-19. He lived inside the airport with handouts from other passengers.
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The court found him a potential danger to the community as the man was living in a secure place inside the airport with someone else’s identity, especially when the airport is supposed to be a safe place for people to travel.
“So if I understand you correctly,” Cook County Judge Susana Ortiz said, “You’re telling me that an unauthorized, nonemployee individual was allegedly living within a secure part of the O’Hare airport terminal from Oct. 19, 2020, to Jan. 16, 2021, and was not detected? I want to understand you correctly.”
The Chicago Department of Aviation, which is in charge of overseeing the city’s airports said in a statement,”While this incident remains under investigation, we have been able to determine that this gentleman did not pose a security risk to the airport or to the travelling public.”
Singh has been charged by the court with felony criminal trespass to a restricted area of an airport and misdemeanour theft. In addition to this, the 36 year old man has been barred from entering the airport if he is able to post the $1,000 for bail.