ARLINGTON COUNTY, Va. (WDCW) – Officials at Reagan National Airport (DCA) in Arlington County, Virginia, said they confiscated a stun gun disguised as an iPhone from a passenger’s carry-on bag.
“Right at the bottom where you would normally plug in, it’s got little prongs that indicate that that’s where you would get zapped,” TSA spokesperson Lisa Farbstein said of the device, which was detected at DCA on Monday.
Stun guns, which are legal to carry in Virginia (with restrictions), are still prohibited from passing through TSA checkpoints. They can, however, be packed in a checked bag, Farbstein noted.
“If you do have a stun gun, a Taser or something like that, you may travel with it,” Farbstein said. “If you want to transport it for your flight, the right way to do it is to make sure that it’s inoperable. So you want to take out the batteries.”
The passenger whose bag contained the stun gun was not arrested or charged.
Passengers at DCA who spoke with Nexstar’s WDCW this week were surprised at how realistic the fake phone appeared.
“That’s absolutely crazy. I’m glad they were able to catch that. I mean, that’s scary,” said Jennifer Lucio Vargas.
“In the folder of crazy things, I suppose this is just one more object to go with the big knives and the guns and what have you,” Jim Asplund, another traveler, said. “But that’s pretty ingenious. And also disturbing.”
Farbstein said the TSA has screened a record number of passengers this summer, which means officers are finding even more prohibited items to confiscate.
A passenger at DCA on Tuesday, however, seemed confident in the agency’s ability to keep travelers safe.
“There’s all kinds of things that you hear about people trying to get stuff through,” passenger John Denning told WDCW, “but it seems like they’re doing a good job to keep it out.”