A Bengals fan is getting the attention for all the wrong reasons after video showed him being escorted off a plane in Cleveland earlier this week after a conversation about the football team led to a fight.
According to FOX 8 in Cleveland, a Frontier Airlines jetliner was preparing for takeoff when two passengers began fighting about the Bengals and their Super Bowl chances. FOX 8 reports that witnesses said the man lunged at an airline worker while being taken off the plane.
Video shows another passenger having the unruly fan in a chokehold position. Brake thinks that was the moment that made the situation get out of control.
“When I watched that, I was like, ‘OK, this guy is assaulting somebody that they’re trying to remove from the plane.’ The guy is not qualified to handle that situation and it could have made it worse, and you’ve got all these people that are stuck there and there’s going to be a stampede to try to get out of a little small door,” Brakes told FOX 8.
As the unruly passenger was being escorted off the plane, he told other passengers, “I was a Bengals fan, I was the only Bengals fan. I’m not a bad person, bro, I drank a little too much, and one guy back there had a problem that I was drinking too much.”
“Before I had actually recorded, he said that they were discriminating against him because he possibly did have too much to drink,” said Jason Brake, the passenger who recorded the video.
A statement was released by Frontier the day after the incident:
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“As Flight 2415 scheduled from Cleveland to Phoenix on February 9 was at the gate prior to takeoff, a passenger was behaving disruptively and was asked to exit the aircraft by a gate agent. The passenger became increasingly aggressive, physically assaulting the gate agent. The passenger was subsequently arrested by local enforcement and has been permanently placed on our Prevent Departure list.”
