American Airlines passenger claims man assaulted her by continuously punching her reclined seat: 'It was scary'
An American Eagle flight passenger who claimed that the person seated behind her repeatedly punched the back of her reclined seat, now wants to press charged against him.
Wendi Williams posted the now-viral video of the strange encounter she had with the unidentified male co-passenger and now wants him to be charged with assault. According to her, even the American Eagle (an American Airlines subsidiary) flight attendant who turned up to help her should be fired for her "huffy" nature.
“I want to know who he is. I would like to press charges against this man. I was assaulted on this plane,” Williams told TMZ on Friday. “Everybody thinks that when I say he was punching me, that’s what was happening in the video. I started taking the video because he was punching my seat, literally," she said.
According to Williams' account, when she reclined her seat, the man behind him complained it took up his space. He requested she put her seat up when he ate, and Williams complied; but the moment she reclined her seat back once he was done eating, he began violently punching her seat. The man's actions can be seen in the video Williams filmed thinking that would make him stop. "It happened every 20-30 seconds. It probably happened eight times. That’s when I started videoing,” Williams added, before going off about her frustration with the attendant, Loretta.
The attendant allegedly threatened to remove Williams from the flight if she didn't delete the video recording and also handed her a "Passenger Disturbance Notice" that warns of federal prosecution. “I had my hand raised as I was videoing him so that I would get the flight attendant’s attention. She came over to me kind of huffy,” Williams claimed. Loretta allegedly came to the man's seat and apologized to him for the limited space. “I was like, are you kidding me?” Williams said.
"It was scary and very painful" Williams said, claiming that she lost time at work, had to visit a doctor, receive X-rays and suffered headaches because of the incident.
According to TMZ, the airline has told them that they are looking into the incident and on-flight attempts were made to ease the confrontation. According to the airline, things wouldn't have turned this nasty had the two passengers been respectful to each other.