*A deaf, non-verbal man was violently assaulted by another passenger during a United Airlines flight from San Francisco to Washington Dulles.
The attack occurred two hours into the flight when Everett Chad Nelson allegedly assaulted the victim who was seated by a window. The attack lasted a full minute before another passenger intervened, Mens Journal reports.
“He was just very violently and very aggressively just pummeling the guy who was in the window seat who was in front of me and it was vicious,” witness Sandhya Gupta recalled to San Fransisco’s ABC 7 News. “This wasn’t like a bar room, I’m going to throw a couple of punches around, I mean this was vicious.”
Gupta said Nelson “wrapped this guy in sort of like a hug and the assailant just, it was the weirdest thing, he just went limp.”
According to an FBI affidavit, a doctor on board provided treatment for the man’s injuries.
“This doctor was just like trying to stop the bleeding, his face was just a mess. It was awful. There was blood spatter on the window shade and all that kind of stuff,” Gupta explained.
“When he was trying to communicate with us in sign language that’s when we realized he was deaf and non-verbal,” Gupta continued. “He also just kept texting, ‘I’m so scared.’ Like it was just awful.”
The attacker reportedly claimed to flight attendants that the victim assaulted him previously on the street. The victim communicated via messages that he had “never seen the man before in his life.”
“Thanks to the quick action of our crew and customers, one passenger was restrained after becoming physically aggressive toward another customer on a flight from San Francisco to Washington Dulles on Monday,” United Airlines said in a statement. “The flight landed safely and was met by paramedics and local law enforcement.”
The deaf man wasn’t seriously injured but he was left “physically and mentally shaken” after the assault, per Mens Journal.
The suspect was arrested after the flight landed at Dulles and remained in custody as of Thursday. The FBI and FAA are investigating the incident.
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