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Who is Maxwell Berry? Ohio man groped female staff on Frontier Airlines flight, arrested

Berry, 22, was arrested after the flight landed in Miami for groping the chests of two female flight attendants and punching a male flight attendant in the face

An Ohio man was arrested after creating an alleged ruckus aboard a Frontier Airlines flight from Philadelphia to Miami. The alleged culprit Maxwell Berry was accused of assaulting a male flight attendant and inappropriately touching two female attendants during the flight on July 31. According to police, he had downed two drinks while on the flight and had ordered another one after which violence ensued. 

Untoward behavior towards flight crew and sometimes towards fellow passengers is a crime as old as time. In 2020, before the pandemic shut everything down, a drunk man named James Clayton Cholewinski-Boy, 32 had allegedly touched the arm of a woman sitting next to him which she immediately brushed off. However he kept up with his advances and went ahead to grab her crotch after which she asked him to back off firmly. Cholewinski-Boy was drunk when this incident happened and one of the charges against him was public intoxication after he was arrested when the plane landed in Tulsa. 

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Who is Maxwell Berry?

According to his Facebook account, Maxwell Berry s a 22-year-old resident of Norwalk, Ohio. He studied from Ohio Wesleyan University and the last post on his account dates back to August 2019. According to his LinkedIn profile, Berry started to work in 2017 and took a job as a Grounds crew at Eagle Creek Golf Club. This was a part-time gig which he moved on from in August 2019. He had also worked at Famous Dave's of America for four months between May to August 2019. According to publicly available records, he's the son of Lisa who is a teacher. Berry's father is Christopher who is listed as a computer tech.

According to the police report, a drunk Berry had brushed an empty cup against the backside of a flight attendant. He then spilled his new drink on his shirt, went to the bathroom to cleanup and came out shirtless. A flight attendant tried to help him with a new change of clothes from his carry-on. After wandering around the airplane for 15 minutes, he proceeded to grope the chests of female flight attendants, the report said. He had also punched a male flight attendant in the face. Since the fight had commenced at this point, Berry had to be restrained and passengers intervened to help the crew do so. 

"He was starting to get aggressive and basically attacked the male flight attendant," said passenger Alfredo Rivera, who also recorded this incident on his phone. Berry was arrested when the plane landed in Miami and was charged with three counts of battery and taken to Miami-Dade County Jail - TGK Correctional Center. Frontier Airlines issued a statement addressing the incident. Frontier Airlines issued the following statement which reads, "During a flight from Philadelphia to Miami on July 31, a passenger made inappropriate physical contact with a flight attendant and subsequently physically assaulted another flight attendant."

"As a result, the passenger needed to be restrained until the flight landed in Miami and law enforcement arrived. The flight attendants will be, as required in such circumstances, relieved of flying pending completion of investigation of the events," the statement concluded. Berry was released from jail on a $1500 bond. Following his release he took to Twitter, changed his username to F--k Max Berry and chose to address a few mocking comments that were made about him, one of them was about him flying coach despite his family being "worth 2 million". All his tweets can be accessed here.

Who are Maxwell Berry's parents?

Maxwell's father and mother are Christopher Lee Berry and Lisa Ann Wilkinson Berry. According to Conan Daily, his father is a computer tech and his mother works as a teacher at the Norwalk Catholic School. They live in Norwalk, Huron County, Ohio. Both of them are Republicans. Maxwell's father has lived in other parts of Ohio including Dublin, Huron, Powell, Columbus and Hilliard. He holds an associate’s degree and graduated from Norwalk High School in 1988. Lisa attended the same high school from 1986 to 1990. After that, she attended The Ohio State University in Columbus. It is not known how and when Maxwell's parents met or got married. They have three children together, Mason, Maxwell and their daughter Megan Elizabeth. On April 30, 2008, Lisa registered to vote in Huron County. Not much else is known about Maxwell's parents, including their net worth.

The FAA has asked airports on August 3 to monitor the sale of alcohol as an investigation revealed "alcohol often contributes to unsafe behaviour."

“As the number of passengers traveling has increased, so has the number of unruly and unsafe behavior incidents on planes and in airports,” FAA Administrator Steve Dickson said in a letter to airport managers on Tuesday, provided to The Hill. "Our investigations show that alcohol often contributes to this unsafe behavior,” he added.