A woman was escorted off a Spirit Airlines plane from Houston after engaging in a profanity-laced, public meltdown aboard the Minneapolis-bound flight.
An hour into the 8 a.m. trip, the plane diverted to Rochester, Minn. after a separate passenger required medical assistance. While attendants onboard waited for paramedics to arrive, one woman, who has not yet been identified, grew increasingly indignant.
Eyewitness footage captured by a fellow passenger, Chianti Washington, and published by ABC 13, shows the woman anxiously jolting up and down the aisles seemingly enthralled in an erratic episode.
“Do you know who my brothers are? They are f**ing Marine snipers. Do you want to f*** with a f***ing Marine?” she yells at one point in the tense one-minute, 20-second video after a male passenger attempted to block her path to the cockpit.
Many passengers were left stunned after the tirade. Some were even reported to be in tears.
“All I could think about was the children on the aircraft — I said a prayer. You just didn’t know what she was going to do,” Washington told ABC News. “We were very much scared and shaken by her behavior.”
After being led off the aircraft by police and transported to a hospital, the woman underwent a mental health evaluation. According to KHOU, she is a military veteran and the outburst is believed to have been brought about by a post-traumatic stress disorder.
“Just to be in that confined space when someone that is going through something very traumatic in their life and there’s nothing you can do,” said Washington. “There’s nowhere you can go.”
Spirit Airlines commented on the incident in a statement to Newsweek.
“We apologize to our guests who had to witness this and for the inconvenience of the delay,” said Stephen Schuler, director of communications at the airline. “Safety is our top priority at Spirit Airlines.”
