Airport officials say a 19-year-old passenger died from a heart attack as Southwest Airlines flight 1801 was preparing to land in Phoenix. But that’s not what really happened.

A passenger, identified to the Associated Press as Edwin Terwiliger, goes berserk as the aircraft lines up in a landing pattern flying into Phoenix.

Terwiliger strikes several passengers, then starts beating on the door to the cockpit. The door is, thankfully, locked. This mayhem takes place in full view of the commuter’s 120 passengers. The wheels are down but the plane is still high enough and flying fast enough that interference with the pilots can be fatal to everybody on board.

That’s when about eight passengers unhook their seat belts and gang-tackle Terwiliger where he stands. The combative young man fights to get free, but the passengers, fearing for their lives, hold him fast. They sit on him and hold him face down on the aisle floor until the plane taxies to its assigned gate.

At the gate the passengers turn Terwiliger over to the cops who are waiting to haul him off to jail. But never mind jail, Terwiliger needs to go to the morgue. He’s dead! "Must have been a heart attack," says an official as the body is carted off. "Myocardial infarction" is the official pronouncement until after the coroner completes his autopsy.

"Nope," says the coroner the next day, "Mr. Terwiliger did not die from a heart attack." The coroner says the feisty young man was "killed by the passengers who restrained him." That ruling implies "blunt trauma and suffocation."

Does that mean the passengers trying to save their own skins and the lives of everybody else on board flight 1801 are guilty of murder?

Hold on. The U.S. Attorney’s office says this is clearly an act of self-defense by passengers who feared for their lives. "No criminal charges will be filed," the feds say. Case closed.