Coincidence?

So I was reading the Sac Bee in class and I come across an article titled "3 convicted in plot to blow up plane" and of course it struck my interest. Three years ago, August 2006, three men were caught attempting to bomb airliners in what would be known as the deadliest terrorist attack since 9-11. Since then, four more men pleaded guilty to having been apart of the conspiracy. Apparently the men were trying to assemble bombs in the airplane toilets using soda bottles with hydrogen-peroxide based explosives injected into them.

And this story brought me back to an unusual occurance that happened in my own life. Well I'm more of a secondary source because my mom was the one who experienced it first hand. I was still there, but I didn't know about it until later.

Summer of 2004, my parents and I were flying back from home from Heathrow, London. We were not able to get seats by each other, so my mom sat in a separate section of the plane, while my dad and I sat next to each other. After the flight, my mom told us that there was a suspicious man sitting behind her with no carry-ons. He was stiff and sitting very still in his seat. He had his hands folded in his lap, his eyes looking down upon them. Every hour on the hour, he would get up and use the lavatory that my mom was sitting in front of. Everytime the man went into the bathroom, she would hear a continuous scratching on the wall. So eventually, my mom decided to walk into that bathroom and inspect. In a small corner behind the toilet, a piece of the wall was missing. It looked as if it had been torn out. This got my mom worried so she told the security on the plane about that man. They kept an eye on him, and the man stopped using the lavatory.

So this got us thinking? Could this have been a test run? To see how far they could get? Ever since then I've been afraid of planes.

But things got even scarrier. We arrived in San Francisco that night and drove home. The next morning, we wake up to the news of the London Bombings.

After the flight, the man disappeared, but he must have been somewhere in San Francisco. The men convicted on Monday of the attacks were planning on bombing a flight from London to San Francisco, similar to our flight.

Tuesday when I read this article, everything just fell into place. We told the story to friends and family but never thought of taking it to the police. But at least the men were caught before anything happened. From this I learned to report anything that makes me suspicious no matter how small because it could save thousands of lives. This may have been an insignificant observation, but now that I think of it, it may have been more than just a coincidence.

Tomorrow is September 11. God bless America.