Woman Charged With Mid-Flight Assault on Crew
DIANE DIMOND, GUEST HOST: Tonight, air rage times two. First, she boozes it up on a cross-country Jetblue flight and then deliberately lights up a cigarette in direct violation of FAA rules. When the crew tells her to put it out, police say she goes on the attack, screaming, cursing, even punching and threatening a male flight attendant, the female passenger so out of control, the pilot forced to divert the plane for an emergency landing. So what`s her excuse in the sober light of day? Well, she claims she doesn`t remember a thing because she was just too drunk, and she blames the flight attendants for serving her too many drinks.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Chaos at 35,000 feet after a passenger allegedly tries to light up a cigarette in mid-flight. Jetblue flight attendants claim 35-year-old Christina Szele brought cigarettes and a matchbook to the bathroom, where they were confiscated by a flight attendant. But just minutes later, Szele begins allegedly smoking at her seat, where a flight attendant says he confiscates the cigarette. That`s when authorities allege Szele turned violent, kicking and thrashing in mid-air. Authorities put the woman in plastic handcuffs, but she allegedly breaks free. The plane makes an emergency landing in Denver, where Szele is arrested and charged with interference with a flight crew and assault, Szele facing more than 20 years behind bars.</s>DIMOND: And air rage saga number two ended today in a British courtroom. Catwalk queen Naomi Campbell made headlines back in April when she was hauled away at Heathrow International Airport -- remember that -- accused of attacking and spitting on police officers during a violent altercation over lost luggage, of all things. But tonight, even after pleading guilty, disrespecting law enforcement and her long history of assaulting underlings, celebrity justice strikes again. Naomi Campbell walks away with no jail time. How did that happen?</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Naomi Campbell`s temper can take her from strutting her stuff on the catwalk to sweeping the streets.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Naomi Campbell has been sentenced to 200 hours of community service after admitting kicking and spitting at police officers.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The supermodel was arrested after a violent row on board a plane at Heathrow airport.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The court heard how Campbell yelled at the captain saying, I can`t believe you`ve lost my</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I`ve always been someone, I have to say, that has stood up and said what I want or what I don`t want. And I`m not someone who can be pushed into doing something. I mean, I`m strong, but I`m sensitive also</s>DIMOND: Good evening. I`m Diane Dimond, in for Nancy Grace tonight. Mayhem at 30,000 feet, a cross-country Jetblue flight turns violent when a boozed-up passenger lights up and then goes on a wild rampage.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A Jetblue flight from New York to San Francisco allegedly turns violent, the flight crew saying they were forced to make an emergency landing in Denver. Jetblue flight attendants claim Christina Szele tried repeatedly to light up a cigarette in mid-air, eventually succeeding. When confronted a second time by flight attendants, Szele allegedly turns violent. Documents claim the unruly passenger was repeatedly hitting, shouting and swearing at the flight crew. The pilot watches the incident unfold on closed-circuit monitors from the cockpit, making the decision to land the plane. Szele allegedly telling investigators she didn`t recall smoking or hitting anyone, Szele`s brother telling reporters she started drinking a lot about a year ago, after a 10-year relationship ended.</s>DIMOND: So your relationship ends and you go on a rampage on an airplane. Somehow, there`s a disconnect there in my mind. Welcome, everybody. I`m Diane Dimond, in for Nancy Grace. Let`s go right out to Richard Randall. He`s with KVOR, a local radio news/talk station there in the Denver area, where this woman is being held tonight. Richard, thanks for being with us. Tell us exactly what this woman is being charged with at this point.</s>RICHARD RANDALL, KVOR NEWSRADIO 740: Well, she is being charged with a couple of federal charges. One of them is interference with a flight crew. She faces up to 20 years in federal prison, up to a quarter million dollars on that. If convicted of assault -- she also faces that -- she would face six months in prison, $10,000 fine there. The least of her worries is smoking on a U.S. commercial flight. That carries a $1,000 fine.</s>DIMOND: Isn`t that ironic, and that`s what started it all. She actually had tried to get up and have a cigarette twice, once at the lavatory door and the cigarette was taken away from her. And then she calmly sat down in the seat and lit up. That`s when these things were deployed. You`ve all seen these. These are those plastic cuffs. They put her hands in them, one of the flight attendants did, and tried to get it shut, but it didn`t hold somehow. She then clocks the flight attendant. You know, Richard, this is pretty serious stuff, now. This is not just some drunk woman flailing around. These are federal charges, right?</s>RANDALL: They`re federal charges. She`ll be back in court in Denver on Monday for a detention hearing. And these are federal charges, federal court, and very serious. They don`t take lightly what goes on in an airplane like this. And her behavior, the language that she was using, very disruptive on the flight. And of course, the allegations that she punched one of the flight attendants in the jaw, very serious. The airlines don`t tolerate it. The FBI doesn`t tolerate it, either.</s>DIMOND: Now let`s bring in Mike Brooks. You all know him. He is our resident cop du jour. Hey, Mike, nice to see you. Now, I know that you set up a sort of passenger abuse system for Delta Airlines, did you not?</s>MIKE BROOKS, FORMER D.C. POLICE, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: That`s correct. We started up -- we were the first airlines -- it was before 9/11 -- to start up an abusive passenger program to deal with incidents just like this, from dealing with people who abuse reservationists, people at the counter, and for violence at the gate and in the air.</s>DIMOND: I see. And was it part of your protocol, so to speak, to use these plastic cuffs? Because in this instance, they sure didn`t work. Maybe they just weren`t tightened enough.</s>BROOKS: Well, the restraints weren`t really put on board the aircraft until after 9/11 and after they -- after some other procedures, cockpit doors hardened, some other things were done. But one of the things, Diane, when you do restrain a passenger, you have to restrain a passenger in front, just in case there is an on-board emergency.</s>DIMOND: Oh.</s>BROOKS: Now, one of the other things, too, is they tell them not to put it on too tight, to put it on securely because you don`t want to have to -- you don`t want to have to cut them off when you cut the circulation off in the passenger`s hands. They`re supposed to monitor that after you put the flex-cuffs on a disruptive passenger.</s>DIMOND: You know, in this vacation time, so many of us already have reservations to go on a flight or have already been on a flight. We`ve already got phone calls on this. Dave is calling in from Canada. Hi, Dave.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hi. How are you?</s>DIMOND: I`m great.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Good. Good. OK. Aren`t those people that work on that aircraft -- aren`t they trained to notice if people are having too much to drink?</s>DIMOND: Yes, I think they are. But there was a dispute about this, about how much she had to drink. Now, this young woman -- and she is a young woman, I mean, look at her -- she says she only had two beers at home -- OK, yes, maybe -- and then nothing in the airport bar, but that when she got on, they served her three vodka drinks. Apparently, according to a roommate of hers, she does not do well on vodka. She turns violent. So why she even ordered vodka, I don`t know. But the flight attendant disputes that and says that she only had one drink. Let`s bring in a first officer, George Davis -- he is a commercial airline pilot -- because he can probably answer Dave`s question better than I. George, what about it? How are the flight attendants trained about serving alcohol? 1</s>ST OFFICER GEORGE DAVIS, COMMERCIAL AIRLINE PILOT: Well, every situation is different and every passenger is different. But they assess people the whole flight, and if somebody starts acting weird -- we get notified a lot that, you know, We`ve cut off the gentleman in 6A or 23B because he doesn`t seem like he can handle his alcohol or he`s wanting more and we`re not going to give him any more. It`s pretty frequent that that happens. But one thing to note here is that we`re not -- the flight attendants are not the first line of defense in this type of situation. The customer service agents at the airports who sell the tickets, who provide the boarding process, they`re supposed to keep their antennae up to these kinds of things. And if they see somebody`s had too much, they`re actually not supposed to let them on the aircraft. I don`t know if that was the situation in this case.</s>DIMOND: Well, that`s interesting. Well, I tell you, First Officer Davis, one of the flight attendants was later interviewed and said, This woman did not appear to me to be drunk. But apparently, she was, or perhaps she just had some anger management issues. Let`s talk about that now more with Lyle Becourtney. He is an anger management professional. Lyle, talk to us about this. Certainly, there was anger there. This woman not only started to fight with the attendants, but there was some awful, awful hate-filled language used against one African-American flight attendant, wasn`t there.</s>LYLE BECOURTNEY, ANGER MANAGEMENT PROFESSIONAL: Oh, yes, there was. You know, the combination of her probably having a history of anger management issues and being intoxicated just made it extremely challenging for her to manage that. She really needed some time out at that time to regroup and get her act together. And the problem here is, she`s up in the air and there`s just no opportunity to get her that type of support that she needed.</s>DIMOND: Yes. I want to bring in Dr. Marty Makary because you have some definite opinions, I understand, about people who say, Well, I only had two drinks at home and it was just beer, and then I only had one more at the airport -- and, and, and. You think they are protesting too much?</s>DR. MARTY MAKARY, PHYSICIAN, PROF. OF PUBLIC HEALTH, JOHNS HOPKINS: Diane, you know, it is amazing how people underestimate the potency of alcohol. But it`s intrinsic to the substance. If it had to go through FDA approval because of the public health consequences, alcohol would never get approved.</s>DIMOND: Well, and don`t people who have a problem with alcohol tend to underestimate the number of drinks that they`ve had, or the strength?</s>MAKARY: Invariably. We use this rule in the emergency room that you should just triple any number that anybody tells you...</s>DIMOND: Wow.</s>MAKARY: ... because it is so predictable that people understate how much they drink because they don`t really know how bad it is for them.</s>DIMOND: Triple, that one I hadn`t heard. Let`s bring in Belisa Vranich. She is a clinical psychologist. So we have somebody who`s obviously angry. We have someone who obviously had an alcohol problem that night, and according to her brother, may have had an alcohol problem for more than a year. Did she also have some emotional problems here to act out like this?</s>BELISA VRANICH, PSYCHOLOGIST: Well, there are some emotional problems, but to me, what jumps out is that there`s definitely a substance abuse problem here which is in combination with the emotional problems. So as well as her having repercussions in the court, I think we are definitely going to see that she`s going to have to get treatment for her problem with alcohol.</s>DIMOND: I love this comment from her brother. "My sister" -- it was just drunk talk when she called the flight attendant the "N" word. "My sister isn`t a racist. It was just drunk talk." One of her roommates also says, She`s very nice when she`s sober. Let`s go to Robert in Massachusetts. Hi, Robert. Have you got a question?</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hello. How`re you doing?</s>DIMOND: Good.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All right. I was just wondering, when they arrested her, did they ever check her for psychiatric problems?</s>DIMOND: Oh, that`s interesting. Let`s go to Richard Randall, the reporter on the scene there. Richard, do you know, have there been any competency tests ordered for this woman, or is she just sitting in jail?</s>RANDALL: She`s just sitting in jail, Diane, but she`ll be back in court on Monday. So far, nothing of that nature. But I`m certain, at some point, her lawyers probably will bring up the issue of provocation. And that is rather than -- according to the arrest affidavits, rather than the flight attendants asking her to quit smoking and asking her to turn over her materials in that second incident, the flight attendant came up and used the word "snatched" the cigarette from her. She says that she was hit in the face. He says, No, I only got cigarette.</s>DIMOND: Peter Schaffer is our defense attorney on the panel tonight. So Peter Schaffer, you`ve heard the basics here. Maybe there`s another side to this story. How do you launch a defense for this woman? It`s the, Gee, I drank too much but it wasn`t my fault, the flight attendant served me too much defense?</s>PETER SCHAFFER, DEFENSE ATTORNEY: No. There is -- my defense in a case like this, or anyone that does federal work, is get her in there and let her dry out for a little bit. She`s going to take a plea in this case because, you know, at any given moment, somewheres -- some, you know, people are drunk somewhere, doing stupid things. But the worst place you can do that is on an airplane because you trigger these federal statutes. So although she`s -- I don`t believe she`s in any danger of doing 20 years in jail, she is -- you know, she has significant felony charges pending, and she`s going to take a plea and it`s going to involve substance abuse. It`s going to involve psychiatric...</s>DIMOND: Right. And Peter, doesn`t she have to come to court with her attorney -- oh, and I`ve got to ask the local reporter if she has an attorney yet assigned to her -- and have a program for rehabilitation? Gee, I know I have a problem here, I`m going to go get help at XYZ?</s>SCHAFFER: Well, I mean, in federal court, she`s been presented before a magistrate. She`ll immediately be given a lawyer. And at some point, if she`s allowed to be released at the detention hearing, I`m sure that one of the conditions of her release will be immediate entry into a substance abuse treatment program.</s>DIMOND: Richard Randall, KVOR radio there in the Denver area, has she been assigned a defense attorney yet?</s>RANDALL: No indication of that yet. Certainly, she`ll have one on Monday when she makes her appearance in court. She was in court earlier Wednesday, advised of the charges against her, did not enter a plea at that time.</s>DIMOND: Holly Hughes, former prosecutor, we are not kidding around here. I mean, some people can make jokes and say, Ha, ha, Oh, she got drunk, and she got, you know, the cuffs put on her, isn`t that ha, ha. These are federal charges. What do you think they`ll ask for, for this woman?</s>HOLLY HUGHES, FORMER PROSECUTOR: Diane, this is no laughing matter. And what they`re going to ask for is exactly what my esteemed colleague said earlier. They`re going to want drug and alcohol evaluation. They`re going to require that she get counseling, whether that`s inpatient or outpatient. As serious as her problem appears to be, it`s probably going to be inpatient. If she`s had an alcohol abuse problem for a year that her friends and family were aware of, Diane, it`s time for the court to get involved. I mean, these people are making comments like, Well, gee, you know, she`s had a problem for a year, and she`s nice when she`s sober.</s>DIMOND: She`s OK until she drinks vodka.</s>HUGHES: Well, exactly. And they knew that, Diane, so -- and she knows it. If they know it, she certainly knows it. Why is she ordering vodka? One, three, it doesn`t matter to me. She is out of control. The courts are going to tell her to get that evaluation. They`re going to tell her to get anger management. She`s going to have to have psychological counseling because, clearly, there`s deeper issues running with this young woman.</s>DIMOND: And they also like to make examples of people so others don`t act the same way. Kim from New York is calling in with a question. Hi, Kim.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes. Hi. I`m a flight attendant for a major carrier, 20 years, and I`m also a lead flight attendant. And I just had this happen a few months ago. I was physically and verbally assaulted by a passenger very similar to this situation. And our whole flight crew had the authorities meet the flight at the Port Authority in New York, and nothing was done. And my question is...</s>DIMOND: Really?</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: ... I`d like to know why this is not being enforced at all airports when authorities are requested.</s>DIMOND: Well, that`s a really good question, and I don`t know who on our panel to ask other than the first officer, George Davis. Mr. Davis, have you had a problem like this that wasn`t addressed?</s>DAVIS: I have had many problems like this in the past. And for some reason, it seems to depend upon the investigating authority when you pull up. We`ve actually had at my airline -- we`ve had -- we`ve requested the authorities to meet the flight, and then when we get there, there`s nobody there but a service agent.</s>DIMOND: Oh, gosh.</s>DAVIS: And then it`s up to the flight attendants and pilots. What are they supposed to do, you know, restrain the person and tell them they can`t go? So there`s definitely a disconnect. And I don`t know why in this situation the flight attendant is calling, why they were not prosecuted. But you know, there definitely is a lack of consistency.