Man Who Shouted 'Jihad' On Flight Gets 9 Months Behind Bars
ALEXANDRIA, Va. (CBSNewYork/AP)-- A New York man who forced a United Airlines flight to return to Dulles Airport last year after shouting "jihad'' and rushing the cockpit has been sentenced to nine months in prison.
Thirty-six-year-old David Patrick Diaz of Poughkeepsie, New York, pleaded guilty to interfering with a flight crew earlier this year.
On a March 2015 flight from Dulles, he was tackled by a group of passengers after shouting "jihad'' and saying there was something in the belly of the plane.
"He was flailing his arms and the two gentlemen behind me jumped up and started fighting with him and so I stepped back because I thought I might get caught in the crossfire. And then they threw him down on the ground face first," passenger Donna Tellam told CBS Denver after the incident.
"When he was running up the alarming things he was saying … he said 'jihad' two or three times … 'the plane was going down, the plane was going down.' And just really alarming things," Don Digby, one of the passengers who tackled Diaz, said. "I knew at that point we could not let this individual have one inch."
His defense lawyer said Diaz has problems with mental illness and alcohol.
Prosecutors sought a sentence of 21 months, but a judge at federal court in Alexandria imposed only a nine-month sentence at Tuesday's sentencing hearing.
Diaz was also ordered to pay $22,000 in restitution to United.
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