An American Airlines passenger who was duct-taped to his seat following an alleged outburst including racial and homophobic slurs said that he does not recall the incident.<\/p>\n
On 3 September, 67-year old Layne Lundeen was restrained in his first-class seat with duct tape and zip ties over alleged unruly behavior. The American Airline Flight 618 was originally traveling from Dallas, Texas<\/a>, to Newark, New Jersey<\/a>, and was diverted to the Baltimore\/Washington Thurgood Marshall airport in an emergency landing.<\/p>\n Upon landing, authorities arrested Lundeen and charged him with second-degree assault and disorderly conduct.<\/p>\n In a court hearing the following day, Lundeen said, \u201cI don\u2019t remember any of what happened,\u201d according to a recording recently reviewed<\/a> by the Baltimore Banner.<\/p>\n The outlet added that after being read his charges, Lundeen said: \u201cI assaulted a police officer? Is that what it says? I don\u2019t have my glasses.\u201d<\/p>\n He added: \u201cOh my god, what a mess \u2026 I don\u2019t remember any of it.\u201d<\/p>\n The Guardian has reached out to Lundeen\u2019s lawyer for comment.<\/p>\n Speaking to ABC following the incident, Juan Mejia, a former law enforcement officer and one of the flight\u2019s passengers who helped restrain Lundeen, said<\/a> that he had allegedly \u201cmade derogatory remarks to the staff of American Airlines and other passengers \u2013 racial slurs, vulgar language, very offensive to the women.\u201d<\/p>\n Another passenger, Richard Olenick, told<\/a> CNN that Lundeen had allegedly also tried to hit the passenger next to him, as well as a woman who tried to intervene. Olenick, who also helped restrain Lundeen in his seat using duct tape, told the outlet: \u201cPhysically it lessened his ability to move for sure, but it did not solve the issue. He was still pushing and resisting and trying to get up.\u201d<\/p>\n American Airlines has also issued a statement, saying<\/a>: \u201cThe safety\u2004\u200band\u2004\u200bsecurity\u2004\u200bof our customers\u2004\u200band team members\u2004\u200bis our top\u2004\u200bpriority and\u2004\u200bwe\u2004\u200bdo not\u2004\u200btolerate violence. We thank our\u2004\u200bteam members for\u2004\u200btheir\u2004\u200bprofessionalism\u2004\u200band\u2004\u200bour customers\u2004\u200bfor\u2004\u200btheir\u2004\u200bunderstanding.\u201d<\/p>\n Meanwhile, Lundeen\u2019s former employer, Long Realty in Tucson, Arizona, said in a Facebook statement that it had \u201cended its affiliation\u201d with him.<\/p>\n \u201cLong Realty is aware of reports concerning criminal charges filed against a former affiliated real estate agent arising from an incident that allegedly occurred during a commercial flight. Upon learning of the incident, Long Realty promptly ended its affiliation with the individual. The individual is no longer associated with or authorized to represent Long Realty in any capacity,\u201d the company said<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An American Airlines passenger who was duct-taped to his seat following an alleged outburst including racial and homophobic…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":619192,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[114,85,46],"class_list":["post-619191","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-il","tag-israel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/619191","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=619191"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/619191\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/619192"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=619191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=619191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=619191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}