Passengers intervened when a man threatened to kill everyone on the flight from Los Angeles to Boston.
VG wrote yesterday about the 33-year-old who attacked the crew on a plane and behaved threateningly. He also fiddled with the plane door and wanted to open it – which is not technically possible due to the air pressure.
Now a dramatic video from the flight has been filmed by a passenger on the plane.
It shows the man shouting and screaming and saying, among other things, that he is going to kill everyone on the plane. He gets up from his seat and also shouts out “where is homeland security? Pull the gun. Don’t try to stop me”.
Suddenly he walks out into the aisle holding a pointed object as he walks in the direction of the cabin.
It was a severed spoon in his hand, and the 33-year-old stabs a crew member three times.
At the same moment, several passengers have risen from their seats to try to stop him from getting into the cockpit. They succeed in that.
AP has spoken to Simik Ghookasian, who sat a few rows behind the 33-year-old. He saw the man fiddling with the emergency exit before he started shouting.
Together with five others, he had the spoon ripped out of the 33-year-old’s hand and put him on the ground.
– That guy was really strong and put up a lot of resistance. We struggled hard to keep him down, it was real teamwork, says Ghookasian.
– Everything erupted within seconds, says Ghookasian, who says he has training in first aid and anti-terrorist work.
A crew member found strips, which were used on the rabid 33-year-old.
Afterwards, it turns out that the 33-year-old had pulled up a handle on the emergency exit.
He says he stabbed the crew member because he thought he was attacking him, and he claims to have ended up in self-defense.
The man now risks life in prison.
