Evidence of the contents of a bag carried by a taxi driver who went berserk at the Louis Armstrong Airport in New Orleans on Friday showed it was more than just a simple case of customer arguing with airport security personnel.

The bag carried by 63-year-old Richard White - who died of the bullet wounds on Saturday afternoon - had six Molotov cocktails made from half-pint mason jars with cloth wicks. Inside the jars were gasoline. There was also a barbeque lighter, reports Fox.

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New Orleans Mitch Landreau said at a press conference that same afternoon that what happened was an unexpected incident that involved a troubled and disturbed individual since the trunk of his cab yielded an acetylene tank, Freon tank and an oxygen tank.

However, Jefferson Parish Sheriff Newell Normand said that White suffered from mental illness. While investigators did not know what White was doing with the tanks, authorities think he was not a national security threat, although investigations are ongoing if he had any connections with airport staff or anyone who was at the airport when the incident happened.

His basis in saying that is White, who recently got his chauffeur license, has little to no criminal history, except for a few peace and traffic charges related to his driving work.

Before White died, authorities were not able to talk to him, but his wife and children cooperated with authorities. Among the people who recently had interaction with White, he was described as very cordial, calm, cool and collected.

"No one at this point in time has any notion about what may have triggered his behavior. And not unlike dealing with the mentally ill, sometimes you will never know what actually triggers some of this type of behavior," CNN quotes Normand.

The behavior include spraying a female and another male Transport Security Administration agents with wasp spray and wielding a machete that led to a Sheriff's deputy officer, Lt. Heather Slyve,  shooting him three times.

During the first confrontation with the female TSA agent, White dropped the bag that had explosive. Normand said White's dropping the bag played a significant role in the airport scuffle since if he held on to the bag, he might not be able to chase the TSA agent through the checkpoint and could have gone to other parts of the airport where he could have created bigger trouble.

Landreau, who thanked the security officers for acting swiftly, said the airport is back to normal operations.

TagsExplosives, Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport, TSA