A Southwest Airlines flight carrying 143 passengers from Los Angeles to Austin, Texas, was diverted and forced to land in Phoenix on Monday evening after a bomb threat was phoned in, officials said.

While the plane was in the air, U.S. F-16 fighter jets were sent to monitor the situation, Michael Kucharek, a spokesman for the joint U.S.-Canadian North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), told Reuters.

Southwest Airlines flight 2675 landed safely in Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, where passengers were removed from the plane, an airline spokesperson said.

“Out of an abundance of caution, the captain of Southwest Airlines flight 2675, en route from Los Angeles to Austin, safely landed in Phoenix to look into a possible security threat,” the airline said in a statement.

Phoenix police and FBI bomb technicians searched the plane and found no explosive devices, FBI spokesman Manuel Johnson said. Law enforcement agents also interviewed all of the passengers. A screening of luggage by federal TSA agents was under way late into the evening.

Johnson said an investigation into the caller who initiated the threat was continuing.

The flight was diverted at the request of the Los Angeles Police Department, according to Southwest and the FBI. 

Upon landing in Phoenix, the Boeing 737-700 was isolated at the airport away from the main passenger terminal.

Other flights in and out of Sky Harbor airport were arriving and departing as scheduled.

All evacuated passengers were to be taken to Austin "as soon as possible," Southwest Airlines spokeswoman Katie McDonald said. 

Reuters contributed to this report.

The Arizona jury deliberating on whether Jodi Arias deserves the death penalty for the brutal murder of her former boyfriend questioned the judge in the case on Wednesday about what to do if they can't reach a decision.

Judge Sherry Stephens gave the jury further instructions and sent them back into the jury room to resume deliberations. 

The jury later adjourned for the day and will start deliberating again on Thursday. 

In announcing the apparent early deadlock, Stephens said she could offer some suggestions to help deliberations but was "merely trying to be responsive to your apparent need for help" and would not try to force a verdict.

If the jury is unable reach a unanimous decision, a new jury would be impaneled to determine whether the death penalty should be imposed.

Since she was convicted of killing Travis Alexander earlier this month, Arias has been pleading for her life to be spared, even though she initially said she preferred to die.

“What I receive will be what I deserve, I believe,’’ she told NBC’s Diana Alvear in an interview hours after she begged the jury to spare her life on Tuesday.

Immediately after her trial Arias told a local radio station: "I said years ago that I'd rather get death than life, and that is still true today."

But in an interview broadcast on TODAY Wednesday, Arias said she deserves life in prison instead of the death penalty because she still has a lot to contribute to society. She also said she feels betrayed by the jury’s verdict, which her attorneys plan to appeal.

Arias' lawyers argued that she was abused by Alexander and that she killed him in self-defense.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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KSDK.com

A church van that crashed near Vandalia, Illinois.

Five men were killed Monday when a church van carrying 11 passengers rolled over on Interstate 70 in southern Illinois, the Fayetteville County sheriff’s office confirmed.

It was unclear why the van, which was carrying members of a church group from a gathering in California to Pennsylvania, flipped near Vandalia, Ill., about 70 miles northeast of St. Louis. The van had Maryland license plates.

No bad weather was reported in the area at the time of the crash, according to the sheriff’s office.

Several people were taken to the hospital, some by medical helicopter, The Leader-Union in Vandalia reported on its web site. 

Four of the injured were taken to Fayette County Hospital in Vandalia and were in fair condition, a spokeswoman told The Associated Press. Two were taken to Greenville Regional Hospital in Greenville, Illinois, but their conditions were not immediately available. 

Eastbound I-70 was closed to traffic because of the rollover, NBC station KSDK in St. Louis reported.

According to a preliminary report from the Illinois State Police, the white 2002 Dodge 15-passenger van was eastbound on I-70 when it veered off the roadway and rolled multiple times, ejecting several passengers before coming to a stop.

All of the victims were men, Fayette County Coroner Bruce Bowen told KSDK.

Bowen told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that nine passengers were ejected from the van, including the five men who died. He said positive identification of the dead may take until Tuesday night.

The coroner also issued a cautionary note about such large-capacity vans in which passengers often do not wear safety belts.

“When you get a van loaded with that many people and you run into a problem, the weight shifts and it’s bound to go up on two wheels,” Bowen told the Post-Dispatch. 

Investigators were on the scene of the accident trying to determine the cause.