FBI: Three Hijackers Had San Diego Ties

SAN DIEGO -- Three of the five men suspected of hijacking an American Airlines jet that crashed into the Pentagon lived in San Diego recently, the FBI said Friday.

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One of the men, Hani Hanjour, is believed to have piloted the plane when it slammed into the headquarters of the Defense Department on Tuesday, killing 190.

According to a national database of property records, Nawaq Alhamzi's name was on a lease at Parkwood Apartments, a 175-unit apartment complex in Clairemont, 10News reported.

Neighbors said that three men moved out of the complex in a hurry over the weekend and have not been heard from since.

One neighbor told 10News that he often saw a computer turned on inside the mens' apartment, with a flight simulator program running.

"I could look in, if the door was open. You could always see a flight simulator type of thing, with airplanes on it," Ed Murray said.

According to Murray, the three men, "never had anything to do with anybody. That's all I know. And then one day they're gone. Quick. They started moving out Saturday night -- and Sunday they were gone."

Residents of the complex also said that the men lived in squalor.

"They were just sleeping on the floor ... just blankets everywhere and pillows ... trash everywhere, like Jack-In-The-Box cups, McDonalds cups, old bags and things like that," neighbor Martin Herrick said.

Hanjour, Khalid Al-Midhar and Alhamzi were three of the 19 people indentified Friday as hijackers in the terror attacks.

Few other details of their activities in Southern California emerged Friday. At least two attended local San Diego community colleges.

"All we know is they lived in the San Diego area in the year 2000," FBI spokeswoman Jan Caldwell said.

Federal Aviation Administration records show a Hani Hanjoor received a commercial pilot's license in 1999 and listed a post office box in Saudi Arabia as his address.

San Diego police said they had no information on Hanjour. Asked later about the other two men, police said they would no longer comment on the case.

Jim Gross, a representative Irvine-based Western National Property Management, which manages Parkwood Apartments, declined to comment.

Residents were stunned to think that the men who lived in the now empty apartment number 127 could have been the same men who hijacked American Flight 77.

"I really don't know what to think," neighbor Labarron Coker told 10News. "They could have killed me and my family. I live right next door to them."

The complex is not far Montgomery Field, where several companies offer flight training.

FBI agents have been asking questions and searching student records at local flight schools, according to the schools' operators. But none of a dozen-plus local flight schools contacted by The Associated Press said they knew of the men.

T. Gerald Chilton Jr., a corporate officer for CRM Airline Training Center in Scottsdale, Ariz., said a Hani Hanjoor received pilot instruction there for three months in 1996 and in December 1997.

"We have notified the FBI of this and turned over all our records," Chilton said.

FBI agents were searching through student records of the San Diego Community College District, which runs three colleges in the city, district spokesman Barry Garron said.

American Airlines Flight 77, which left Washington at 8:10 a.m. Tuesday bound for Los Angeles, crashed into the Pentagon at 9:39 a.m.

Government authorities said 190 people -- a combination of military and civilian employees on the ground and the passengers in the plane -- were believed to have died.