Our relaxing ten-day Barbados vacation ended March 8 when we boarded American Flight 1192 at 4 pm bound for Miami on a three-and-a-half-hour flight in comfortable First Class, row 3, seats A and B. The first two hours passed uneventfully. I read our Gualala Rotary book club selection, Ireland: A Novel, by Frank Delaney, on my iPhone, and Alice read a Barbados newspaper borrowed from a large, genial fellow, seated just in front of me. At sone point Alice remarked that a fellow in the first row, far left seat (seat D), was laughing often and quite loudly.
Just past the two-hour mark I stood up and stepped into the aisle to let Alice go to the restroom located forward on the left of the cockpit door. Alice asked the two fellows from row one, who were standing in the Flight Attendant galley area, if they were in line for the bathroom and they said they weren’t, so Alice continued to the restroom and entered.
Then the fellow who had been laughing, now standing in the galley area, started arguing with the male and two female flight attendants who were trying to work there. They told him to go back to his seat and he loudly refused. Then he pushed towards the door to the cockpit and the flight attendants continued to order him to return to his seat.
One of the female flight attendants left the galley area with a roll of duct tape and handed it to a passenger, a large man seated a row behind me. He took the duct tape and came up the aisle towards the front. On his way forward he recruited the big guy seated in front of me and an even bigger Polynesian guy seated across from me to go with him to control to troublemaker. As they passed I got up and stood behind them to see if Alice was in danger.
I saw the bathroom door open and Alice started out. She saw me and later told me that she had never seen me so worried. As she started to leave the bathroom she was afraid that there was a terrorist attack. A female flight attendant saw Alice exiting the bathroom and told her to go back in, which she did without asking the attendant why.
The three large men confronted the angry man and told him to either get in his seat or be put in it by force and duct taped to it. The trouble maker continued angrily and obscenely to refuse to take his seat and the three men replied – with a few choice obscene words of their own - that they would make him take his seat.
The impasse ended abruptly when the Polynesian guy suddenly grabbed the fellow and slammed him into his seat. This inspired him to protest very loudly while the three men demanded that he stay in his seat and shut up or be shut up. The shouting abruptly halted when the fellow realized that he was sitting on broken glass. The wine glass he left at his seat when he went to argue with the flight attendants shattered when he was thrown into his seat. He quietly got up and stood at his seat while a flight attendant removed the broken glass and wiped up the spilled wine with a white towel, then went to the restroom and told Alice to come out in order that the cleanup could be completed in the bathroom.
When Alice saw the towel she thought that it was bloody and was relieved to find that it was just red wine. Alice weaved her way through the “big guys” still standing in the aisle and returned to her seat next to me.
The remainder of the flight was uneventful until we landed in Miami and taxied to the gate and the ramp was attached. When the aircraft door was opened a uniformed policeman entered the plane and stood in the aisle near the troublemaker. A wheelchair was then brought for an elderly woman in the right seat of the first row, and she and her attendant who was sitting behind her and just in front of Alice left the plane.
The policeman began asking questions about what happened, who was involved, and if anyone would volunteer to accompany him to an office area in the terminal to make a formal statement. Several passengers volunteered that they had videoed the incident on their smart phones and would transmit their videos to an address the policeman provided.
The policeman then told the perpetrator to stand up with his hands behind his back and be handcuffed. The Polynesian fellow identified himself as the person who physically acted and arranged to give a statement in time to make his connecting flight.
The process with the policeman lasted about twenty minutes and finally we were all allowed to exit the plane. When Alice and I left the plane we passed by the handcuffed fellow leaning against a wall in the hallway in the company of six policemen. His plight inspired me to think about his coming day in court. Not too many years ago, in similar circumstances, he could have denied doing what he was accused of and many people would have to be brought from far away at great personal expense and inconvenience to testify against him. Now everything he did and said is recorded in several videos; there is no need to have witnesses try to remember and describe all that they saw and heard in such a confused environment.
It's plea bargain time!
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