LOS ANGELES — An unruly passenger aboard a Breeze Airways flight headed to Los Angeles Wednesday caused such a scene that passengers had to help subdue him, and the plane had to divert to an airport in Colorado.<\/p>\n
The unruly passenger was waving a skateboard, got into an altercation with flight attendants and other passengers and broke free of his restraints twice, according to the airline and local authorities.<\/p>\n
The passenger was heard using racist slurs and refusing to cooperate.<\/p>\n
“Why am I here after 7:45 p.m.? I’m going to tell you why. This Tony Hawk wannabe from Outer Banks, North Carolina, with a skateboard had too many Bloody Marys this morning,” passenger PK Mackey told Eyewitness News after landing in Los Angeles.<\/p>\n
Breeze Airways Flight 704, which took off from Norfolk, Virginia, at 9:17 a.m. Wednesday, landed in Grand Junction, Colorado.<\/p>\n
The Grand Junction Police Department said in a statement it responded to the airport there about 11:15 a.m. local time after receiving a report that an “intoxicated male passenger became agitated, yelling racist slurs at airline staff while waving a skateboard.”<\/p>\n
Flight crew and passengers apparently twice tried to restrain that passenger and both times he escaped, forcing the flight to be diverted.<\/p>\n
In the air traffic control recording, they said, “They’re calling it a level four disturbance now. They say they had him restrained. He broke out, and there’s passengers holding him down now.”<\/p>\n
“Approach says the passenger is free and he’s using what they were trying to restrain him with as a weapon.”<\/p>\n
A flight attendant is heard in a video saying, “Is there any person that can help me out?”<\/p>\n
That is when a man, who fellow passengers called the “linebacker in 17C” grabbed the unruly passenger and forced him to his seat.<\/p>\n
“He just got up and sat him down in the seat like a little kid,” passenger Jeff Hankerson said.<\/p>\n
That passenger, whose name is Ray, said that once he heard they needed help, he had to intervene.<\/p>\n
“My son was on there and there were other kids on there, and so I just had to sit him down,” Ray said. “Once I heard the flight attendants say ‘Can somebody help me?’ I was just like, I saw black almost, and I just grabbed him and sat him down.”<\/p>\n
The airline, citing reports from crew who were on board the flight, said there was a physical altercation that resulted in minor injuries to one passenger and a flight attendant.<\/p>\n
However, the police said no reports of assault or injuries to passengers or the flight crew were made to the law enforcement.<\/p>\n
After the plane landed in Colorado, the passenger was taken into custody by Grand Junction police at the direction of the FBI and taken to the Mesa County Detention Facility.<\/p>\n
Breeze Airways does not fly from Grand Junction to Los Angeles. The airline only has flights from that airport to Santa Ana, Las Vegas, Hartford and Salt Lake City.<\/p>\n
The crew apparently timed out for the day and couldn’t fly until Thursday morning, leaving the rest of the passengers stuck in Colorado for hours.<\/p>\n
Almost eight hours after their scheduled arrival time, the weary passengers arrived in Los Angeles.<\/p>\n
“Thank God for linebacker 17C, because he really saved the day,” Mackey said.<\/p>\n
“That was crazy,” passenger Angel Hankerson said when she landed in L.A. “I didn’t expect that to happen. You never really think that would happen to you until it happens.”<\/p>\n
As for the hero, he said he did play football in high school in Watts and was a defensive end and a tight end.<\/p>\n
Airlines have reported more than 1,000 incidents involving unruly passengers so far in 2025, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.<\/p>\n
ABC News contributed to this report.<\/p>\n
NOTE:A previous version of this report erroneously said Breeze Airways does not operate out of Grand Junction. It has since been corrected.<\/p>\n
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