Armed with fists and an unexplained determination, a man attacked Delta Air Lines crew and passengers Thursday as he tried to pry open an exit door midair, according to the FBI.
Joseph Hudek IV, 23 years old, was eventually subdued by multiple people on the Seattle-to-Beijing flight – in a melee where bottles of wine became weapons.
He and more than 200 other people were on board when the plane took off around 5 p.m. from Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. Nothing about his background, as described in an FBI affidavit, seemed extraordinary and he appeared sober, according to the FBI.
The Boeing 767 had been flying about an hour – crossing over Vancouver Island – when Hudek rose from his first-class seat and walked into the bathroom.
He was inside about two minutes, according to the affidavit. Then he “lunged toward the forward right exit door of the aircraft, grabbed the handle” and tried to pull it open.
Two flight attendants immediately tried to stop Hudek. They called for help when he pushed them away and kept trying to force the lever that held the door in place, the agent wrote.
A flight attendant asked passengers for help and called the pilot, according to the FBI agent’s affidavit. The pilot reported the emergency and swung the plane back toward Seattle.
A man got out of his seat to help. Witnesses would tell the FBI that Hudek punched him in the face repeatedly and hit him with a bottle of red wine, of which several were laying around.
A flight attendant picked up a wine bottle, then a second one, and smashed them each over Hudek’s head, according to the FBI.
“Hudek did not seem impacted by the breaking of a full liter red wine bottle over his head,” the FBI agent wrote, “and instead shouted ‘Do you know who I am?’ or something to that extent.”
Hudek was eventually subdued – held down in the galley, zip-ties fastened around his limbs. The lever, which had been opened halfway, was returned to its proper place.
The crew later said that had the plane been flying lower, the door could have opened.
The U.S. attorney’s office charged Hudek with interfering with a flight crew.
A flight attendant and a passenger were taken to a hospital with “severe facial injuries.”