The executive director of the Bill and Hillary Clinton Little Rock, Arkansas airport was shot in a firefight with federal agents on Tuesday as they served a warrant on his home.
Bryan Malinowski was injured around 6 a.m. with gunshot wounds sustained from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and transported to a local hospital. He had shot back, and hit an ATF agent. According to the man’s brother the airport director was in critical condition and on life support.
The aftermath of the confrontation saw law enforcement removing weapons and ammunition from Malinowski’s property, along with the use of heavy-duty tools by firefighters to enter the house.
#UPDATE Neighbors spotted guns and ammunition being carried into an ATF trailer after @littlerockfire carried equipment used to cut through metal into the home of Bryan Malinowski, the executive director of the Clinton National Airport. He is hospitalized following a shootout… pic.twitter.com/T6iWyugYhc
— Neale Zeringue (@NealeZeringue) March 19, 2024
Just last week he’d been in Washington meeting with the state’s senators, and drew an annual salary of $253,000. He’d been with the Clinton National Airport since 2008, and Executive Director since 2019.
Wonder if he knew he was shooting at law enforcement or was just jumpy at people breaking into his house at 6 AM… would seem easier / wiser to arrest him in his office at work?
Wonder if he had information on Hillary?
Also why does that witch have her name on the airport? She wasn’t President.
@AndyS, Neither was Harry Reid.
@AndyS what is wrong with you? You don’t have to be a president to have an airport named after you. Great way to show your misogyny.
@Brodie, neither was John Wayne
A Bill&Hill airport…
Mayors LaGuardia and Hartsfield would like a word after you’re done w General Logan & astronauts Glenn & Husband….
WHY is the gov’t doing this at 6 AM in the morning?
Look at all the people and equipment there in the pictures. They had to organize this long before 6 AM.
If all they were doing was serving a warrant, they could easily have done this during his working hours at his office. Seems like this fellow’s 4th Amendment rights to be safe in his own home were violated with a bogus warrant. I wonder who lied to the judge to get this warrant?
Then they steal his private property from his home. I think they WANTED to steal his property by showing up at his home !!
Seems like these gov’t folks purposefully wanted a blow-up and a firefight with guns a-blazing.
These gov’t folks seem to be certifiable crazies. We live in dangerous times in our own country.
Why are we allowing the ATF to carry weapons that can be used to hurt people? Don’t these people have an atrocious track record.
How are we going to bring the people who murdered this man to account? It shouldn’t be legal to go into someone’s home at 6am and murder them. Crazy world we live in.
The ATF is a terrorist organization that operates to persecute people for possessing alcohol, tobacco, or a means of self defense.
People have a right to defend themselves and their property from breaking and entering which is what it is when anyone tries to break into a home.
Citizens are always going to lose unless they put in a police force who will arrest federal agents for breaking into people’s properties. Federal agencies have no power if the local and state police stop colluding with them and don’t allow them to operate in their cities or states.
Even if this is a rare case where the person committed a real crime like robbery or larceny, it’s criminally negligent and still terrorism to break into someone’s home at 6AM or any time. The man killed was a victim no matter what he did because he was defending himself, his family, and property from a breaking and entering.
This is a corrupted system and it can’t be fixed within.
Ironic. The executive director of Bill and Hillary Clinton Airport was stashing large amounts of weapons and ammunition in his home. Something tells me he didn’t hug the statues outside the terminal when he went to work.
Yes, the ATF should be required to phone ahead whenever they are executing a search warrant. It’s the polite thing to do, after all.
Mena walked so Little Rock could run
I hope he doesn’t commit Arkancide
Probably just ATFE just collecting guns that can be later sent to Mexico and Mexican drug cartels.
I’m going to take the opposite side from James M on this:
Yes, its quite obviously not spur of the moment and yet chose to do it at 6am. That says to me they expected trouble and were hoping to catch him asleep and avoid a firefight. Obviously, they failed.
More on this:
https://www.ualrpublicradio.org/local-regional-news/2024-03-20/airport-director-involved-in-shootout-previously-at-center-of-property-dispute
Also, note that he’s the one that shot first.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/03/20/atf-agent-shooting-little-rock-airport-executive/0bbf9498-e717-11ee-9eba-1558f848ec25_story.html
The Washington Post says that ATF says he fired on them from within the house, but the brother says that they broke down his door forcing him to defend himself. Those seem contradictory.
@Gary – Is that anywhere near Ronald Reagan airport? For someone who prefers to call Reagan as DCA or National – as do I – it seems like a cheap shot to not just say Little Rock airport. Do we truly need more stupid political divisions inserted into a nonpartisan situation. I haven’t read the above comments yet but I’d bet two years of my IRA savings that some person made a dumb partisan comment. Back in a moment to see.
Back. Oh yeah.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. Sounds more like a shopping list. You would think that after Waco they would have learned a lesson. Koresh went to McDonald’s every morning. Could have easily taken him down on a traffic stop. But instead invite the media and make a big deal out of it resulting in a lot of deaths on both sides. Why couldn’t they take this guy down on a traffic stop on his way to work when he’s removed from most of his weapons?
H2oman: You are assuming that the ATF was simply serving an arrest warrant. Wrong. If you read the news articles, you would learn that they were serving a search warrant on his house. No traffic stop would suffice.
Malinowski must be a conservative. This government doesn’t do these kinds of vicious attacks against democrats.
@Fred
There was no reason he had to be home to execute a search warrant. They obviously knew he had weapons. The judge issuing the search warrant has federal powers and could have included his vehicle or issued a warrant to detain him.
Wow. This story really brought out the right wing-nuts.
Maybe they do Google searches for stories with the names of their favorite past boogeymen. Benghazi!!! LOL.
A real question for people who think this is a misuse or overstepping of authority on the part of cops/feds—Do you feel the same, AMD speak out, with things like this happen to people Breonna Taylor?
Was it a no-knock warrant? And what was the urgency to bust his house and get him in the middle of the night instead of just grabbing him at work or elsewhere.
What does the search warrant cover?
AndyS calling Hillary a witch? In that case, his (or is it her?) Lord T-rump is a much worse witch/warlock, and a religious person can safely assume his/her/their orange Dark Lord T-rump is more likely destined to the eternal punishment realm than the target of orange Dark Lord T-rump’s lock her up” chants.
Sincerely,
Not a Fan of Hillary
This website is really going off the rails.
He’s the executive director of the Little Rock, Arkansas airport. While yes it is the name of the airport, the “Clinton” reference (without even the city in the headline of this article!) only serves to inflame a political debate, get comments, clicks, and revenue.
Do better!
Scudder,
I am consistent on thinking that US law enforcement is overly-militarized in its approach and that I am not a fan of the “let’s send a message” home invasions when there are ways to intercept targets without the home invasion drama that gives these self-selected, poorly-psychologically-screened “law enforcement” types an adrenaline rush and “war stories” that are not needed for securing a target with minimal risk to innocent bystanders and other non-targets while pursuing justice under the rule of law.
And 6am is just a lousy time to go try to grab someone inside their house loaded with weapons. A lot of people are up in their own homes at that time or more easily awaken at around that time than at say 3:30am.
I am also wondering if the guy had any security cameras and motion detectors running at his house. Those feeds can often be technically disrupted without generating alerts for the owner/operator of the home security systems.
Daniel,
A lot of the big audience print and TV media has referred to the Little Rock airport by its current full name. Would you say that reference to Reagan National Airport is done for “click-bait” purpose? Maybe it is at times, but names are names even as I stick to identifying that airport as just National or DCA.
Anyone know what law enforcement was looking for under the search warrant? Given the ATF involvement, I had assumed it was for weapons. But what kind of weapons-related crime was the director of the airport suspected of committing and/or abetting?
The feds got to choose the time and place for this to go down. He’s an airport director. You could search the whole house during daylight hours while the guy was at work (they only had a search warrant for the house). But, as usual, when they want to make a big splash in the course of conducting their operations, they default to the ol’ “pre-dawn raid.”
They didn’t have any actual charges solidified against the guy, so they probably figured that by selecting this option they could just conduct an extrajudicial execution after the guy predictably fired upon unknown (unannounced?) intruders into his house. It almost worked…
@H2oman et al: You absolutely positively do NOT want to try and initiate a traffic stop to arrest someone. You’re in public (bystanders), they might not stop, you don’t know what they have in their car, etc.
At his office makes more sense to me… but maybe not if he works at a commercial airport.
As to why 6 AM: It’s daylight, but minimal other people otherwise out and about.
First Whitewater and now this. Knew them Clinton’s were up to some gun running down Mexico way.
You can’t make this stuff up folks. Ye Hear.
Cue Sarah Sanders and her $20k lectern.
As usual, several commentators have constant nightmares about the email lady.
As if Benghazi was the worst human atrocity in millennia.
And the other shoe drops:
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/arkansas-airport-executive-killed-shootout-was-investigation-weapons-s-rcna144572
Illegal gun sales. No wonder the ATF went in big.