Bomber day 2

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Rickey Welch arrived at his job as a sheet metaltechnician at Yingling Aviation on Friday at hisusual time, about 4:20 a.m.

But when he got inside, he was told the hangarbay where he worked was closed for security rea-sons.

The line service person who told him didn’t knowwhy.

“Maybe somebody important is coming in,” Welchsaid he first speculated. Pilots of general aviationaircraft from around the country patronize Yingling,located at Wichita Mid-Continent Airport.

It wasn’t until later that he learned that a HawkerBeechcraft Services avionics technician who workednext door, Terry Lee Loewen, had been charged in aplanned suicide bombing plot as he attempted to

BUT ARREST WAS A ‘WAKE-UP CALL’

Security atairport is good,worker saysBY MOLLY MCMILLINThe Wichita Eagle

Please see AIRPORT, Page 17A

In the 10 years Terry Lee Loewen was married tohis now ex-wife, Sarah, he was a peaceful, easy-going, quiet man.

Loewen, a native Wichitan and graduate ofHeights High School, had loving parents and a nor-mal childhood, Sarah Loewen said.

“Terry didn’t like confrontation; he was never oneto start a fight,” she said. “He was so mellow.”

He was a good father to their son, Damien, 24, shesaid.

Terry Loewen has not been part of her life for along time, Loewen said.

Today, she’s angry for what he’s done and whathe’s putting their son through.

The man who authorities say was capable of plan-ning a suicide attack on Wichita Mid-Continent

WOMAN ANGRY ON SON’S BEHALF

Molly McMillin/

The Wichita Eagle

SarahLoewen, theex-wife ofTerry LeeLoewen, whois accused ofplotting tobomb WichitaMid-ContinentAirport, sayshe used to bemellow andpeaceful.

Ex-wife ofbomb suspect:That’s not theman I knewBY MOLLY MCMILLINThe Wichita Eagle

Please see EX-WIFE, Page 17A

Jibo He is a professor ofpsychology. He currentlyspends 16 hours a daystudying how we’ve recent-

ly begun trying to accidentallykill ourselves and others.

Just a few years ago, drun-ken driving was the one bigkiller on our roads. Now wehave two.

Drunken driving still kills 30people a day. But hundreds ofthousands of us began talkingon cellphones while drivingjust a few years back.

Then more people did it –and added texting while driv-ing.

Then even more people

made calls, texted – and be-gan “webbing while driving.”With only one hand on thewheel, they swipe their thumbon the screen of their smart-phone, log onto the Internetand chat on Facebook, tweeton Twitter, watch videos andlook at photographs.

Suddenly, distracted drivingkills nine people a day. Dr. Hethinks this will get worse.

Distracted driving last yearkilled 3,328 people and injured421,000, according to the Na-tional Highway Traffic SafetyAdministration.

Four years ago, 13 percent ofall drivers in a survey toldState Farm that they drove

WSU professor’s researchlooks at distracted driving

Mike Hutmacher/The Wichita Eagle

WSU student Huston Howery is a volunteer test subject. The research partly involves comparing driver ability when readingtext on a cellphone vs. when wearing Google Glass, which has an interactive screen that dangles in front of one eye.

Mike Hutmacher/The Wichita Eagle

WSU professor Jibo He is conducting research ondistracted driving. Dr. He is inventing an app that wouldshut off our smart devices while we drive.

“Imagine driving down Kellogg for eight seconds or so, blindfolded, at 65 mph ... at rush hour.”

Lt. Joe Schroeder of the Wichita Police

BY ROY WENZLThe Wichita Eagle

Please see DRIVING, Page 16A

Disappointing turnout atthe John Mayer concert atIntrust Bank Arena may hurtWichita’s chances of gettingmore pop music at the down-town venue.

That’s arena general manag-er A.J. Boleski’s fear after theDec. 1 concert brought infewer than 7,000 people.

“It’ll challenge us for thefuture,” he said of the tur-

nout, which was bolstered bya Groupon deal that offeredtickets for as low as $29, in-cluding fees. The originalprices ranged from $39.50 to$69.50, plus fees.

The top complaint Boleskireceives about the arena,which opened in 2010, is thatit attracts only country acts.

But country is what sells inthis market. Taylor Swift andLuke Bryan both brought inaudiences of more than10,000 people in the third

quarter. Rascal Flatts drew8,800.

“Success for one type ofshow breeds more of that typeof show,” Boleski said duringan interview last week, callingcountry the “bread and butterof concerts for our area.”

If people want other typesof acts to come to the arena,people need to come out forthem, he said.

John Mayer plays a mix of

INTRUST BANK ARENA CONCERTS

Poor attendance could hurt pop’s chancesBY DEB GRUVERThe Wichita Eagle This story was

reported with thehelp of the Pub-lic Insight Net-work, a part-nership betweenjournalists andreaders. To join,go to Kansas.com/publicinsight andclick on the “get started” link.

Please see ARENA, Page 6A

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Airport “is somebody I neverknew,” Loewen said. “I wouldhave never, ever thought hewould do anything this hor-rible. I can’t even put it inwords.”

Terry Loewen, a 58-year-oldavionics technician, was ar-rested early Friday as author-ities allege he moved forwardwith a plot to detonate explo-sives at Wichita Mid-Conti-nent Airport.

In the aftermath, someWichitans are left trying tocome to terms with what theyknew and what they didn’tknow about this man.

Damien Loewen declined aninterview request.

Efforts to reach Terry Loe-wen’s current wife, Deborah,were unsuccessful. On Fridayin court, she declined to an-swer questions.

Terry Loewen’s plannedattack was designated to killhimself and inflict the maxi-mum number of deaths, adetailed criminal complaintsaid.

Authorities arrested Loewenabout 5:40 a.m. after they sayhe tried to open a securityaccess gate to the airport and deliver a vehicle loadedwith what he thought to behigh explosives but were not.

What he didn’t know untilhis arrest is that the people hehad been conspiring withwere undercover FBI agents,U.S. Attorney Barry Grissomannounced Friday.

The 21-page criminal com-plaint quoted communicationhe had with FBI employees.

In it he told an FBI em-

ployee that he had beenstudying subjects such asjihad, martyrdom operationsand Sharia Law.

In August, the complaintsaid, he wrote that “Brotherslike Osama bin Laden ... are agreat inspiration to me, but Imust be willing to give upeverything (like they did) totruly feel like a obedient slaveof Allah.”

Loewen faces three federalcharges: one count of tryingto use a weapon of mass de-struction, one count of at-tempting to damage propertyand one count of attemptingto provide material support toa designated foreign terroristorganization that Loewenallegedly thought was al-Qaida in the Arabian Penin-sula, based in Yemen.

The news was a “totalshock,” Sarah Loewen said.

“It angers me to no end that my son has to deal withthis,” she said. “I don’t knowhow he could do this to hischild.”

Her son and his father had agood relationship, she said.

“They were close,” Sarah

Loewen said. “This is going tobe a hard road for him (Da-mien).”

She has not seen Terry Loe-wen since their son’s weddingin April.

Sarah met Terry at the for-mer Beech Aircraft Co., nowBeechcraft Corp., in the1980s.

At one point, Terry left thecompany to work at Learjetacross town. She wasn’t surewhen he rejoined the compa-ny or when he moved to hiscurrent position at HawkerBeechcraft Services at theairport.

“He was happy. He was anormal human being,” shesaid.

They filed for divorce in1994.

She didn’t know why orhow Terry Loewen hadformed such radical ideas.

But recently, Damien toldher that his dad had become aMuslim.

“I said, ‘What is wrong withhim?’ ” Sarah Loewen said.

As for Damien, she andDamien’s wife will be there tosupport him, she said.

And as for Terry Loewen,“He’s dead, in my books,” shesaid. “He can rot in hell, forall I care.”

Contributing: Amy Renee Leiker

Reach Molly McMillin at

316-269-6708 or

[email protected].

Follow her on Twitter: @mmcmillin.

EX-WIFEFrom Page 1A

“He’s dead, in my books.He can rot in hell, for allI care.”

Sarah Loewen, former wife of Terry Loewen

gain airport access through asecure gate.

After he arrived at work,Welch could see throughsecurity cameras that thestreet had been blocked off and unmarked and FBIvehicles had converged on the north side of the building.

In the meantime, he begancleaning another hangar thathad remained open.

At about 6 a.m., workers gotthe OK to go to their depart-ments.

“We went on over to ourwork area,” Welch said.

Through the north windowof his hangar, he saw a van at the secure gate and agentstaking photographs and oth-erwise processing the scene.He did not see Loewen.

The gate where the allegedterror plot unraveled is be-tween Hawker BeechcraftServices, at 1980 AirportRoad, and Yingling.

If he had known the suspectcould have had explosives,Welch said, he would haveleft the building. Instead,Loewen was transportinginert explosives and posed no threat, authorities saidhours after his 5:40 a.m. ar-rest.

“You think about the Okla-homa City bombings,” Welchsaid. “It was one of thosescary situations. We get socomfortable with our sur-roundings. It was a wake-upcall.”

That said, Welch believessecurity is good at the airport.

“We get checked a wholelot,” he said. “I just thank Godthat nothing happened, andthey caught him and we go onand live on.”

In the meantime, Mid-Continent Airport was oper-

ating on a normal scheduleSaturday. No flights weredelayed or canceled becauseof the Friday incident, said anairport spokeswoman.

Travis Rosel was at theairport Saturday to see hismother off after her visit inWichita.

“It’s unbelievable that some-thing like that could happen,”Rosel said.

His main concern waswhether her flight would beaffected.

Rosel said he expected se-curity to be tighter, as it wasimmediately after the 9/11terrorist attacks.

Daniel Collins, who said heworks in law enforcement,was flying out of Wichita onSaturday.

From his training, “I’m al-

ways on heightened senseswhen I go anywhere,” Collinssaid. “I always scan the roomand get a feel for who’s in thearea.”

He lives in Aurora, Colo.,where a gunman entered amovie theater last year andkilled 12 people and wounded70 others.

“It’s sad that we live in aworld like that,” Collins said.

People aren’t going to stopgoing to movies or quit flyingbecause of the fear of attacks,he said.

If you let things like thatdictate your life, Collins said,“You’ll live in a hole.”

Reach Molly McMillin at

316-269-6708 or

[email protected].

Follow her on Twitter: @mmcmillin.

Dave Williams/Eagle correspondent

Wichita’s Mid-Continent Airport was fairly quiet Saturday morning, a day after a man wasarrested in connection with a plan to bomb the facility.

Dave Williams/Eagle correspondent

Passengers arrive at Wichita Mid-Continent Airport onSaturday morning. Activity was light.

AIRPORTFrom Page 1A

“I just thank God that nothing happened, and theycaught him and we go on and live on.”

Rickey Welch, sheet metal technician at Yingling Aviation

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Bomber day 2