Airline Passenger Restrained With Duct Tape Aboard Flight
November 6, 2008 by national
Filed under Homeland Security News
An airline crew used duct tape to keep a passenger in her seat because they say she became unruly, fighting flight attendants and grabbing other passengers, forcing the flight to land in North Carolina.
Maria Esther Castillo of Oswego, N.Y., is due in court Thursday, charged with resisting arrest and interfering with the operations of a flight crew aboard United Airlines Flight 645, from Puerto Rico to Chicago.
Castillo, 45, struck a flight attendant on the buttocks with the back of her hand during Saturday’s flight, FBI Special Agent Peter Carricato said in a criminal complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Charlotte. She also stood and fell onto the head of a blind passenger and later started pulling the person’s hair, the complaint stated.
According to affadavits filed in federal court in Charlotte, Castillo caused plenty of trouble for passengers and the flight crew.
Passengers and the crew said Castillo’s behavior became loud and disruptive about 90 minutes into the flight. According to FBI agent peter Carricato, Castillo began using profanity at others on the plane and was “invading the personal space of other passengers by touching and jabbing them.”
A passenger sitting across from Castillo told police that the suspect called her a “bitch” and hit her in the arm, despite her efforts to ignore the woman.
Some of the other complaints against Castillo:
– At one point in the flight, she fell forward, over the passenger in front of her, and began pulling the woman’s hair. The passenger was blind, authorities said.
– She threw a wet cloth across the plane.
– She slapped a flight attendant on the buttocks with the back of her hand.
– She repeatedly refused to listen to instructions, given in English and Spanish.
“This behavior continued intermittently, with short periods of calm, followed by loud outbursts,” Carricato said.
Finally, Carricato said, the flight crew used duck tape to keep Castillo restrained in her seat.
Carricato said the suspect became quiet when the pilot announced that the flight would be landing in Charlotte to get rid of a disruptive passenger. But, he said, Castillo grew angry again when airport police boarded the plane.
Why did they take so long to subdue her? And why didn’t someone just knock her out? Obviously she wasn’t, but she could have been a diversion for other terrorists to act while she was being disruptive or being attended to.