Unruly passenger: 'There's a bomb on the plane!'
Kevin Rowson - 11 Alive Atlanta
ATLANTA -- police had to forcefully remove a passenger from a Spirit Airline plane after he was being unruly during the flight from Fort Lauderdale to Atlanta. Before he was removed he fought officers and screamed "There's a bomb on the plane!"
Passengers on the flight were terrified. "Everybody was nervous when you hear something like that," said Charles Davis. "You start doing a lot of soul searching because you don't know what the next two minutes would hold."
Spirit Airline flight 404 left Fort Lauderdale at 7:42AM and landed at Atlanta Hartsfield Jackson International Airport at 9:42AM. Davis said the passenger in seat 7A was acting unruly the entire flight. "We thought he was having an anxiety attack," he said. "You couldn't run, you couldn't get off the plane so you were there for the whole story whether you liked it or not."
Davis' wife recorded the incident with police on her cell phone. The man said the following when a female Atlanta police officer told him to get out of his seat: "There's a bomb on the plane. There's a bomb on this f-king plane! If she takes me off I will blow the f-king plane up! I will, get the f-k out!"
Three minutes after the man was removed from the flight passengers were told they could get up and depart the plane. Davis said he didn't feel comfortable until after the man and his luggage were taken off. "I didn't know what he had in the belly of the (plane), if it was set on timers, nobody knows that at that moment," he said. "We can only presume and hope for the best."
According to a police incident report the pilot told Atlanta police "the behavior started directly after takeoff and continued throughout the one hour and a half flight."
The officer wrote in her report "I ascertained that subject was suffering from some sort of mental illness or suffering some sort of psychotic break."
The man was taken to Grady Memorial Hospital.
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