Sarah Maria Beach, 45, disrupted a Delta flight when it was in the air by spilling the beverage on her co-passengers while the flight was in mid-air.
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| A Delta passenger was arrested for misdemeanor after she spilled coffee on people onboard a flight from London to Salt Lake City, on Thursday, and physically assaulted an air marshal. In this photo, a Delta flight lands at the Salt Lake City International Airport in Utah, Aug. 19, 2004. |
By Pritha Paul, International Business Times - Business
A Delta Airlines passenger was arrested for misdemeanor after she spilled coffee on people onboard a flight from London to Salt Lake City, Utah, on Thursday, and physically assaulted an air marshal.
According to court records filed against Sarah Maria Beach, 45 — a U.S. citizen living in London, who also went by the name Sarah Cullum — the accused disrupted a Delta flight when it was in the air by spilling the beverage on her co-passengers, SF Gate reported.
"At one point she stood up and she was drinking coffee and she literally just threw the whole thing, not the cup, the coffee, and it hit the ceiling, it was going down the walls," Martin Nicholls, a passenger on the plane said. "It went over probably about six or seven passengers, some, almost, to the other side of the plane."
Beach was also accused of running up and down the aisle of the plane, knocking over a drinks cart in the process.
"She literally sprinted down the end [of the aisle]. And I mean she's only a small woman, really," Nicholls said. "Everyone's becoming very concerned because, I thought, we're at 30-odd thousand feet over the sea. What if she tried to open the door?"
Finally, she was subdued by some flight attendants and an air marshal and brought to the back of the plane. Beach was made to sit next to the air marshal and she seemed to be "initially calm.”
However, after accompanying the accused to the bathroom twice without any incident, the marshal was assaulted by Beach on the way to the bathroom the third time. She jumped onto his back and attempted to choke him by grabbing his “head, neck and jawline.”
A second air marshal had to get involved in order to pull her off the first one. The accused was put in handcuffs for the rest of the journey. It was not immediately clear as to what provoked her actions. Nicholls said he spoke to Beach and she confessed that she has “a lot going on in her life,” but didn’t give any further details.
Beach appeared before the court Friday and was ordered by the judge to undergo a mental evaluation. U.S. Attorney's Office spokeswoman Melodie Rydalch said if she’s convicted of misdemeanor assault she could face a year in prison.
Back in March, Delta Airlines was sued by a female passenger who claimed she was groped during an international flight and the airline gave her a cold shoulder about the incident.
Allison Dvaladze said she was sleeping on an overnight flight from Seattle to Amsterdam in April 2016 when a man sitting beside her repeatedly grabbed her crotch. After she yelled at the man, she got up from her seat and ran to the back of the plane only to be told by one of the members of the flight crew to “let it roll off your back.”
Due to the lack of support and action by the flight crew, Dvaladze said she decided to draw everyone’s attention to mid-flight assaults.
“A lot of airlines don’t want to be identified as the airline that has the problem,” Dvaladze said. “This is not an airlines specific problem this is an industrywide problem.”
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