Elderly woman in wheelchair refuses to let airport security look inside her adult diaper at LAX, faces $13,000 fine
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: A 78-year-old Highland Park woman claimed she was facing up to $13,000 in fines for refusing to let the airport security search her adult diaper.
Nancy Furlong said that she was subjected to a humiliating ordeal by the Transport Security Administration workers at Los Angeles International Airport when she and her son arrived to board a flight in July.
After subjecting the elderly woman in the wheelchair to multiple pat-downs, one of the TSA agents demanded to see inside the waterproof underwear.
A shocked Furlong refused to let them do that and, as a consequence, she was not allowed to board and ended up missing the flight. Her son, Sean, who was accompanying his mother at the time, began recording the confrontation in a video that was later obtained by KTLA.
At some point during the confrontation, the airport security was called on the scene.
"And when they got to the diaper... We weren’t going to fly," Nancy can be heard saying in the video as she sat in the wheelchair.
Sean, on the other hand, was heard telling the TSA members: "Because she does not want you to check her diaper, we have to wait for the police to come to clear us?"
One of the policemen on the scene was seen trying to explain what was going on and trying to justify the actions of the TSA members. "Once you put the bag on the belt, you’re submitting to all... They don’t know what's inside, they just wanted to do a quick visual check," the policeman said.
After they missed the flight, the mother-son pair were detained at the airport. They were finally released by the police after spending a few hours at the airport.
"We start finding out that its the consistency of their diaper when they were doing the multiple pat-downs, so that’s why they want to look inside her diaper. I keep telling them that we just want to leave," Sean told KTLA. "She was strong and she says no, it was wrong... And we should let as many people know."
A few days after the harrowing ordeal, Nancy received a letter which said she could be fined up to $13,000 for her refusal to let the authorities search her diaper.
Sean said that although he and his mother were initially worried about the "humiliation factor", when it came to sharing their story, it was Nancy who decided to write down her experience as she wanted people to know what happened.