3 women charged with assaulting Delta employees after flight attendants told them they couldn't boar
Court documents alleged the women were told they were too drunk to board a flight to Puerto Rico. If convicted, the three women face up to 10 years in prison.
Three women have been charged with assault in an incident in which they're accused of attacking Delta employees who told them they couldn't board a flight from New York to Puerto Rico because they were too drunk, said court documents that Insider reviewed.
Long Island residents Jordan Nixon, Janessa Torres, and Johara Zavala were arrested on Thursday in connection to a September 22 incident at John F. Kennedy International Airport, said a press release from the US Attorney's Office in the Eastern District of New York.
In the letter to a judge, Breon Peace, the US Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said that the women's flight from New York to San Juan, Puerto Rico, was delayed by almost five hours on September 22, and surveillance videos and bar receipts showed that they ordered about nine alcoholic drinks while they waited for their flight.
Peace said in the letter that when the women got to their gate, Delta employees determined they should be denied access to their flight because "they were acting belligerent, one of the defendants was refusing to wear her mask properly, and Zavala was visibly disoriented and possibly intoxicated."
The flight crew was notified of the intoxication, and a member of the team and the captain stepped off the plane to observe the women before determining that they were too drunk to board, Peace wrote.
Delta offered the women an opportunity to rebook the flight later in the day, Peace added.
Peace said that the women were then asked to leave the area. An altercation ensued, during which Nixon is accused of taking a Delta ground security officer's radio and hitting him on the head with it, Torres is accused of stepping on the same security officer, and Zavala is accused of punching a Delta gate agent in the face.
Peace's letter said flight crews were able to pull one of the employees behind a glass door, but the "three defendants continued to scream and strike at the Flight crew as they attempted to hold the doors closed."
The security officer and gate agent were taken to the hospital and have not returned to work since the alleged attack, Peace said in the letter to the judge.
Nixon's attorney said in a statement to Insider that Nixon "maintains her innocence, and she denies the allegations" made by prosecutors.
The attorneys for Torres and Zavala both declined to comment on the matter.
"The extreme and aggressive behaviour in connection with our air travel is out of control," Peace said in a statement. "This Office has zero-tolerance for violent conduct that threatens the safety of airline passengers and employees and will prosecute defendants who allegedly engage in such conduct to the fullest extent of the law."
In a comment to Insider, a Delta spokesperson said: "Nothing is more important than the safety of our employees and customers, and we have zero tolerance for physical violence on our airports and our planes. We will work fully with law enforcement officials to ensure this unacceptable conduct is held to account."
A US attorney's office spokesperson confirmed to Insider that the women were arraigned on Thursday, and each was released on a $25,000 bond.
Their next court appearance is on February 3, US District Judge Raymond Dearie.
If convicted, the three women face up to 10 years in prison.
Union representatives for airline workers have been outspoken about their concerns with preflight drinking, calling on terminal operators to implement stricter policies around the sale and consumption of alcohol in airports.
The Federal Aviation Administration said it logged more than 6,000 incidents of unruly passengers in 2021, though most of those did not lead to criminal charges.
Recent indictments or unruly passengers reflect the Justice Department's high priority of aviation-related crimes following Attorney General Merrick Garland's instructions to federal prosecutors in November.
Before Garland's announcement, the department could spend a year or longer preparing to charge a suspect in an unruly-passenger incident.
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