Man Screams 'Jihad' On Dulles Flight, Held Down By Passengers
WASHINGTON, DC (WJZ/AP) --Emergency in the air.
A United Airlines jet forced to return to Dulles International Airport after passengers jumped into action to deal with a disturbance on board.
As Linh Bui explains, they tackled a man who became violent on a Denver-bound flight.
This was quiet a scare for some of the passengers on board a plane Monday night. Shortly after take-off, a passenger on board started screaming and running toward the cockpit.
Passengers tackled the man, pinning him to the floor of the aircraft just minutes after takeoff. The pilots quickly radioed a distress call to air traffic control.
Moments later, air traffic control radioed to confirm the safety of the plane.
The United Airlines Boeing 737 took off from Dulles at 10:24 p.m. heading for Denver. All 33 passengers and six crew members returned safely to Dulles about 20 minutes later.
Law enforcement detained the unruly passenger and took him off the plane.
The man was taken to a DC-area hospital for evaluation. No passenger were injured.
A government official says the unruly passenger screamed "jihad" on the plane.
But there's nothing in his background to suggest he has a connection to terrorists.
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Curtis Tellam of Superior, Colorado, said his wife, Donna, was on the flight and sent him a text describing the incident as "the scariest moment in my life" and saying "some crazy guy just tried to get into the cockpit."
Tellam said in a phone interview Tuesday that he called his wife after the plane landed and said he could hear other passengers telling the man to calm down.
He said his wife told him she noticed the man acting strangely before the flight, constantly moving his bag from one overhead bin to the next. Tellam's wife told him that shortly after takeoff, the man ran forward in the cabin, through the first-class cabin where she was sitting and almost to the cockpit before three other passengers stopped and restrained him.
She told her husband the man shouted that there were other jihadists on the plane and that he would give the people who were holding him a lot of money if they would let him go.
"She's tough. She flies a lot ... but she's really shaken up," Curtis Tellam said of his wife, who said the man was basically lying at her feet the entire time he was restrained.
Linh Bui will have this story on WJZ at 4, 5 & 6 p.m.
(Copyright 2015 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
