An unruly airline passenger ranting about anti-LGBTQ conspiracy theories was arrested after flight crew diverted the plane to Chicago out of concern for the safety of others onboard.
The man was aboard a Sun Country flight that left Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport at 7:13 a.m. on October 3. According to passenger Seth Evans, a Minnesota native who now lives in New York, the man acted erratically throughout the flight.
Evans told the Minnesota Star Tribune that the man repeatedly stood up and screamed in between playing rounds of Candy Crush on his phone.
He said the passenger screamed about being “gang chased,” “cooked,” and “radiated” by the LGBTQ community, which he blamed for giving him cancer. The man also claimed he was being chased by gay people.
At one point, the passenger — who was wearing “no less than 15 masks stacked on top of one another” — shouted, “Trump is here!”
As his tirade escalated, the man began screaming, “The plane is going down!”
Following that particular outburst, the flight crew diverted the plane — originally bound for Newark Liberty International Airport — to Chicago O’Hare, roughly an hour after takeoff.
Chicago police officers boarded the plane after it landed, handcuffing the passenger and taking him into custody. The aircraft remained on the runway as U.S. Marshals and local officers interviewed witnesses.
A spokesperson for Sun Country confirmed that the flight had been diverted to Chicago “as a precaution in response to a disruptive passenger.”
A Sun Country spokesperson confirmed the diversion “as a precaution in response to a disruptive passenger.”
“The flight landed without incident and the passenger was turned over to law enforcement,” the spokesperson said in a statement. “We appreciate our passengers’ patience during the interruption to their travels, and the flight continued on to Newark later that morning.”
A D.C. grand jury has refused to indict local resident Sean Charles Dunn, 37, who was dubbed the "Sandwich Guy" after he threw a Subway sandwich at a federal officer during a Trump-era law enforcement deployment near 14th and U Streets NW.
A familiar face in the District’s LGBTQ nightlife scene, Dunn had been charged with felony assault on a federal agent.
Video from the incident shows Dunn yelling at the officer, calling him and his colleagues "fascists" and shouting, "I don't want you in my city!" He then hurled his sandwich at the officer and tried to run, but was arrested and charged by the U.S. Attorney's Office on August 13 with felony assault, a charge carrying up to eight years in prison.
Charlie Sheen is opening up about past sexual encounters with men in two upcoming projects -- his memoir The Book of Sheen, out September 9, and the Netflix documentary aka Charlie Sheen, premiering September 10. The Two and a Half Men star gets candid in both about his history of drug use, relationships, and sexual dalliances.
"I flipped the menu over," Sheen says in both the documentary and the book, according to PEOPLE. The actor has previously spoken about his sexual encounters with women during the height of his addiction struggles.
Gun rights groups are blasting the Trump administration after CNN reported that senior Justice Department officials have been discussing the possibility of restricting transgender U.S. citizens from owning firearms, following the recent mass shooting at a Catholic church in Minneapolis. Although officials described the talks as "preliminary," critics warn that even floating such a proposal scapegoats transgender people and threatens their constitutional rights.
The internal talks appeared to draw on a theory promoted by conservative influencers and media outlets: that transgender people are mentally ill, and that transition-related hormones negatively affect mental health, making them more prone to violence.
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