Two agents from the National Police and two from the Civil Guard, all off duty, arrested a man as the alleged perpetrator of a sexual assault on a flight attendant in the middle of a flight from Madrid to Cancun. Upon landing, the troops handed the passenger over to the Mexican authorities.
The arrested person, a 41-year-old American man, allegedly insulted and threatened other passengers, attacked one of them with several punches and touched a stewardess, police sources have informed EFE.
According to one of the witnesses, he touched one of the crew members with an attitude that he would describe as “groping”, which could constitute a crime of sexual assault.
Furthermore, the man had been drinking a bottle of whiskey that he had brought onto the plane and was threatening to lock himself in the bathroom and cause a fire or set off the fire alarms with a lighter.
The events occurred on September 23 on a flight between Madrid and Cancun operated by the company World2fly, part of the Spanish company Iberostar.
Halfway through the journey, when the plane was crossing the Atlantic Ocean and given the insecurity situation that the passenger was causing, the crew requested that, if there were any members of the State security forces, they notify him.
On the flight were two National Police agents assigned to the Murcia and Aragón headquarters, and two other members of the Civil Guard, stationed in Teruel and Santander, who did not know each other and made themselves available to the aircraft commander.
According to the account of the events to which EFE has had access, the pilot informed them that, after activating the protocol corresponding to these situations and given the company’s desire to file a complaint against the troublesome passenger, the four agents became the highest authority of the plane and responsible for its safety.
The American man, about 1.85 meters tall and with a strong build, was found in the last row of seats on the plane – a place that they would later discover was not his – exhaling smoke from an electronic cigarette towards the rest of the passengers.
Upon realizing the police presence, the arrested person tried to flee and struggled with the officers, finally being subdued and immobilized with plastic ties.
After searching him, the agents located the lighter in a jacket pocket, a sharp screwdriver in his toiletry bag and his passport, which allowed him to be identified as a US citizen born in 1982.
The members of the security forces guarded the man for the remaining five hours of the flight, during which he continued insulting the rest of the passengers and the agents themselves.
“You’re not going to get off the plane, I’ll take care of that” or “when we get off the plane I’m going to take care of you” were some of the threats he made, according to the same sources.
Once they landed in Cancun, the man was placed at the disposal of three agents of the Mexican National Guard, who took charge of his custody.
