‘I hope you get eaten by an alligator!’ Man kicked off plane in Fort Lauderdale for no mask
Another meltdown over masks on a plane caused a major travel disruption.
A passenger on a JetBlue flight last Saturday from New York to Cancún reshows fused to wear a mask and led the pilot to change course. Passenger Lawrence Redick IV, 22, caught a snippet of the action and posted it on TikTok after the plane was diverted to Fort Lauderdale.
The New Yorker’s video a flight attendant standing next to the now masked passenger. People heckle the man, screaming “Let’s go, get up, let’s go,” and “Boo!”
On Redick’s now viral TikTok, Siri is heard reading his text: “All this just because of one person, it’s so frustrating.” Passengers yell and boo and hurl insults as two uniformed officers escort the man off the aircraft.
Right before he exits in Florida, a man screams, “I hope you get eaten by an alligator!”
Redick told the Miami Herald that the plane was delayed on the Fort Lauderdale airport tarmac for about an hour and a half.
JetBlue’s website states that face coverings are required inside all airport terminals and for the flight for those 2 and older due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. An airline spokesman sent a statement about the incident to the Miami Herald:
“On February 27, JetBlue flight 751 with scheduled service from New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport to Cancun, Mexico, was forced to divert to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, when a customer became aggressive and threatening toward our crewmembers and other customers after being asked multiple times to comply with JetBlue’s face mask policy and the federal mask mandate,” it said. “The customer was eventually escorted off by law enforcement in Fort Lauderdale. The flight continued to Cancun without further incident. The safety of our customers and crewmembers is our first priority at JetBlue, and the customer in question is not welcome to fly JetBlue in the future.”
It is unclear whether the maskless man was arrested or was allowed to travel to his next destination.
Charles Wiener was on his way home in Haiti’s capital when a group of heavily armed men surrounded his vehicle, held him inside at gunpoint and drove him to a slum, where he was held captive for three days.
The abduction sent shock waves through Portau-Prince last March, highlighting growing fears over a spike in kidnappings for ransom; it was one of at least three reported that day. Wiener was considered vulnerable because he was in a car without tinted windows, allowing his captors to quickly grab him. For many, it was a reminder that no one was safe: Wiener is a U.S. citizen and his family well-known in the Haitian coffee business.
On Monday, Peterson Benjamin, a suspected gang leader with the feared Village de Dieu, or
Village of God, gang, appeared in federal court on charges related to Wiener’s kidnapping and that of four other U.S. citizens, including three minors. The kidnappings happened between March and November of last year.
The nine-count indictment by a Washington, D.C., grand jury includes charges of hostage taking and possessing a firearm during a violent crime and was unsealed Monday as Benjamin made his first court appearance in Fort Lauderdale. He asked to be transferred to the District of Colombia, where the indictment originated from, to fight the charges. Each of the hostage taking charges carries a maximum penalty of life imprisonment. He also faces up to life imprisonment for the gun charges.
Speaking through an interpreter during Monday’s court hearing via video conference, Benjamin told a federal judge that he understood the charges pending against him, but that he had no money to hire a private attorney to fight them.
The indictment sheds new light on what has became an increasingly organized and frightful scourge affecting everyone from wealthy businessmen to poor schoolgirls.
According to the filing, Wiener, 48, was transferred from his vehicle to another car on March 5, 2020, and then taken to a safe house. He was also forced to stay in the building against his will, while Benjamin and others negotiated the $19,000 ransom payment. He was freed one year ago Monday.
Seven months after Wiener’s abduction, Benjamin and other, still unidentified conspirators collected $11,800 in ransom for the release of three U.S. citizen children and their Haitian father after the four were also forced from their vehicle at gunpoint. Five days later, another U.S. citizen was also abducted. Marie Quine, was forced from her vehicle at gunpoint on Nov. 6 and released two days later after Benjamin and his accomplices received about $16,000 in ransom.
Known also by the name “Ti Peter Vilaj,” Benjamin cast himself in court as a self-employed indigent, offering no specifics, and with just the equivalent of $250 in a Haitian bank account. He had no children, he said, but was currently engaged to be married with a woman who lives in New York.
Benjamin was arrested by Haiti National Police last week and transferred over to Federal Bureau of Investigation agents on Friday. He was flown to the United States along with Lissner Mathieu, 55, a convicted drug trafficker and close supporter of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse who violated the terms of his 10-year probation when he fled to Haiti in 2006 after serving more than 1,070 days in jail.
According to U.S. court files, Mathieu started arranging shipments of cocaine between Haiti and Port Richmond, New York, in 2001 for a fee of $3,000 per kilogram for the drug organization he was working for. Soon, he decided to branch out on his own. He later admitted in court to importing over 500 kilograms of cocaine between 2001 and 2003, laundering the proceeds to Haiti, where his businesses include an ice-making company.
Mathieu, a naturalized U.S. citizen who goes by the nickname “Ti-Nwa,” or Little Black, waived his first appearance Monday and asked to be transferred to New York. The probation violation, a judge said, carries a maximum of five years in jail. Mathieu, who was picked up agents with the Drug Enforcement Administration, also said he is too poor to afford an attorney. He has only about $2,000 in a Haitian bank, he said, and owned a business raising pigs and chicken in Haiti, where he has seven children.
Mathieu, who used the last name Joseph on his various Haitian ID cards, made no mention of his ties to Haiti’s National Palace or its president during his brief court appearance. Following his arrest, a photo of him on the campaign trail with Moïse emerged. Police found an official National Palace access badge on him at the time of his arrest, along with two official national identification cards with different numbers. The national IDs double as voting cards.
In a press release, the president’s office said Mathieu had a badge to the palace like any “service provider,” and was “neither a [close associate] nor a driver of the President of the Republic.” Officials did not explain what, if any, services Mathieu provided.
Last week, the government announced a number of new measures aimed at responding to the surge in kidnappings. Among them: prohibiting private vehicles from having tinted windows. The measure has created confusion in the public. Some now fear all tinted cars belong to criminals not abiding by the rules. Some have thrown rocks at suspect vehicles.
Haiti is in the midst of both a surge in crime and a political crisis. Thousands of protesters have taken to the streets in recent days to demand Moïse’s resignation.
Prince Harry and Meghan’s TV interview divided people around the world on Monday, rocking Britain’ royal institution with claims of racism and callousness toward a woman struggling with suicidal thoughts.
During the two-hour appearance with Oprah Winfrey, Harry also revealed the problems that had ruptured relations with his father, Prince Charles, and brother, Prince William, illuminating the depth of the family divisions that led the couple to step away from royal duties and move to California last year.
The palace has not yet responded to the interview, in which Meghan, who is biracial, described feeling so isolated and miserable inside the royal family that she had suicidal thoughts and said a member of the family had “concerns” about the color of her unborn child’s skin.
The family member was neither Queen Elizabeth II nor Prince Philip, according to Harry.
Leaders around the world were asked about the interview, and citizens of many countries had an opinion.
In Accra, Ghana, Devinia Cudjoe said that hearing that a member of the royal family was worried about the color of the skin of an unborn child was insulting to people of the British Commonwealth, which is headed by the queen.
“That is pure racism,” Cudjoe said. “(The) Commonwealth is supposed to foster unity, oneness amongst black people, amongst white people. But if we are hearing things like this, I think that is below the belt.”
In Nairobi, Kenya, Rebecca Wangare called Meghan “a 21st- century icon of a strong woman. She has faced racism headon.”
Asma Sultan, a journalist in Karachi, Pakistan, said the interview “is going to tarnish the image of the royal family.”
The allegations are especially damaging because many observers hoped Harry and Meghan would help the tradition-bound monarchy relate to an increasingly multicultural nation.
Harry and Meghan left the country, saying they wanted to earn their own living and escape what they called intrusive, racist coverage by the British media.
But the interview brought that criticism into the palace itself, with the couple directing allegations of racism at an unidentified member of the royal family.
Meghan said that when she was pregnant with her son, Archie, Harry told her that the royal family had had “concerns and conversations about how dark his skin might be when he’s born.”
Harry confirmed the conversation, saying: “I was a bit shocked.” He said he wouldn’t reveal who made the comment. Winfrey later said Harry told her the comment didn’t come from Queen Elizabeth II or Prince Philip, his grandparents.
Meghan, 39, acknowledged she was naive at the start of her relationship with Harry and unprepared for the strictures of royal life. A successful actress before her marriage, she said she bridled at the controlling nature of being royal, squirming at the idea that she had to live on terms set by palace staff. This was compounded when staff refused to help her when she faced racist attacks from the media and internet trolls, she said.
The situation became so difficult that at one point, “I just didn’t want to be alive anymore,” Meghan told Winfrey.
But when she sought help through the palace’s human-resources department, she was told there was nothing it could do because she wasn’t an employee, Meghan said.
The implications of the interview — which was broadcast Sunday evening in the United States and was slated to air in Britain on Monday night — are only beginning to be understood. Emily Nash, royal editor at Hello! Magazine, said the revelations had left her and many other viewers “shell-shocked.”
“I don’t see how the palace can ignore these allegations, they’re incredibly serious,” she said. “You have the racism allegations. Then you also have the claim that Meghan was not supported, and she sought help even from the HR team within the household and was told that she couldn’t seek help.”
The younger royals have made campaigning for support and awareness around mental health one of their priorities. But Harry said the royal family was completely unable to offer that support to its own members.
“For the family, they very much have this mentality of ‘This is just how it is, this is how it’s meant to be, you can’t change it, we’ve all been through it,’ ” Harry said.
In the United States, sympathy for the couple poured in. Tennis star Serena Williams, a friend, said on Twitter that the duchess’s words “illustrate the pain and cruelty she’s experienced.”
“The mental health consequences of systemic oppression and victimization are devastating, isolating and all too often lethal,” Williams added.
Britain could be less forgiving, since some see the pair as putting personal happiness ahead of public duty.
Meghan — then known as Meghan Markle, who had starred on the American TV legal drama “Suits” — married Harry at Windsor Castle in May 2018.
But even that was not what it seemed: The couple revealed in the interview that they exchanged vows in front of Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby three days before their spectacular wedding ceremony at the castle.
Archie was born the following year and in a rare positive moment in the interview, the couple revealed their second child, due in the summer, would be a girl.
Harry said he had lived in fear of a repeat of the fate of his mother, Princess Diana, who was covered constantly by the press and died in a car crash in Paris in 1997 while being pursued by paparazzi.
“What I was seeing was history repeating itself, but definitely far more dangerous — because then you add race in, and you add social media in,” Harry said.
Both Meghan and Harry praised the support they had received from the monarch.