Videos clips are now going viral of an altercation between a male Spirit Airlines employee and a female passenger that rapidly escalated from verbal to physical as the pair can be seen screaming at each other in the airport lobby, with the passenger calling the employee a “f*ggot,” a “dumbass” n-word, and ultimately taking a swing at the worker.
According to reporting, the violent altercation took place at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport (DFW). At the beginning of the first clip, you see the employee and the passenger only exchanging heated words with each other. However, the incident appears to rapidly escalate, ultimately leading to a third individual attempting to get in between the two. At this point, the passenger begins to throw racist and homophobic slurs at the airline employee, before she throws a physical punch at the man, as the third person attempts to separate them.
Following the blow, the airline agent proceeds to chase down the passenger, tackle her to the ground, and hits her in the back of the head, all while more onlookers attempt to separate the fighting individuals as they continue to scream and shout at each other.
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At one point the Spirit Airline employee, whose name and identity have not yet been publicly released, begins to shout at onlookers, “Everybody! Back up from me! This bitch put her hands on me!”
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The first of two clips ends with a man standing in between the employee and the passenger while telling the airline agent that he will not allow him to hit a woman.
“You saw what she did,” the employee responds.
Originally, the viral clips were said to have been captured back in July, but Spirit Airlines has since spoken out and confirmed that the violent altercation actually took place in August. As it stands, the original point of the argument has not been made clear.
In a statement released on the matter by the airline and first reported on by WFAA, Spirit Airlines said:
Spirit Airlines does not tolerate violence of any kind, and we are working with local law enforcement to investigate this matter.
The airline also noted that the worker captured in the viral clip was actually employed by a “local partner company,” according to the WFAA report.
The viral clips were originally captured and published by filmmaker Thomas Shannon, who just so happened to be dining at a Panda Express in the airport when he heard the yelling and screaming and raced over to where the pair was in the lobby to see what was going on.
Following the altercation, Shannon said, “I think we need to have the dialogue of physical violence and safety at the airport. And why airports are so dangerous.”
The second viral clip in the series shows the airline employee attempting to defend his actions to another individual while telling other airline workers to get the woman away from the entryway to her flight.
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While the story is unsettling, it serves as yet another incident in a long-standing string of violence, racism, and uproar in airports across the US that seemed to spark back at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, when disgruntled passengers began verbally and physically assaulting airline employees over mask mandates and social distancing guidelines.
Read original reporting on the incident from Mediaite here.
Featured image via screen capture
