Eighty two year old grandmother Lila Mae Bryan was traveling through the Wichita airport on Wednesday when TSA employees identified her 8 ounce bottle of hand gel from Bath and Body Works and confiscated it.
She walked around the X-ray machine and hit the TSA screener in the arm.
She says no one ever told her about the 3.4 ounce liquid rule but she immediately offered to apologize. Police wouldn’t allow her to.
“No, you’ve already done it. It’s battery. That’s what you’re going to be charged with, and there’s nothing we can do about it ‘cause everybody saw it,” she recalls him saying.
Bryan was handcuffed and booked into jail.
In a statement the TSA says,
Threatening, assaulting, intimidating, or interfering with officers while they are performing screening duties is a violation of TSA security regulations, may constitute criminal conduct, and interferes with their ability to effectively protect the public.
Over 20,000 TSA employees have been accused of misconduct, over half multiple times, and they get second and third chances and more.
The TSA employee was uninjured. The gramdnother says she had forgotten to take her bipolar meds, and now that the police cannot stop her from doing so she publicly apologizes. Though she spent 3 hours in jail she was not charged.
These are the kinds of people that make the lines unbearably long. It’s 2017, there are really people who haven’t heard of the liquid rules yet? Sheesh. There should be a test administered on airline websites before selling a ticket to someone.
@Rob – If only they would stay in the regular lines. Unfortunately, the cranky geezers sometimes slip into precheck where they dump their five plastic bins at the front of the lane and rummage through their luggage for a good 10-15 minutes.
Gary let’s thank the TSA for keeping Grandma who’s off her bi-polar meds off the airplane. For once “security theatre” may have paid off for the air traveller.
Even if you’re a infrequent-flying grandma, you can’t assault a TSA officer – or anyone else, for that matter. Seems like she received the appropriate punishment.
Yet again, excusing bad behavior by a passenger and attacking the TSA or an airline — the vast majority of employees of which perform their jobs capably. I imagine this persistent “the passenger is always right — even if they assault law enforcement and are OFF THEIR MEDS” attitude, which has been picked up in the popular media in part due to Gary himself — plays a role in the increase in incidents of passengers refusing to comply with crew instructions and inconveniencing everyone else on the plane.
Sorry I don’t care how old you are you don’t get to assault people because you feel like it. She claims to be bipolar yet she was going to apologize immediately after? That doesn’t even make sense.
Actually, it makes alot of sense if you know what it is like to be bipolar. It is called rapid cycling. You can be calm and then get irrationally upset in less than 5 seconds. Then 5 seconds later you are calm again and over whatever it is that made you upset.
I know this from personal experience. Bipolar disorder consists of extreme mood swings. Usually you go from angry/upset to depressed.
I have a different type. I cycle between calm and upset. FYI, I take my medications, but they can only do so much. My medications lessen the frequency and severity of being irrationally upset.
I don’t act up in airports. I really don’t want to be arrested.
I’m not defending what she did. I don’t know if she is bipolar. I just feel the need to explain what it is like to be bipolar when someone doesn’t appear to understand it.
What’s the problem here? She should be held accountable for her actions whatever her age, race, gender, etc.
Have we gone too far? Have we become too frightened not to follow some rule or regulation and believe there are all sorts of threats out there, we’ve become paranoid and defer to fear rather than common sense. Grandma’s hand soap is no threat, neither is grandma. Our collective fear on another hand…
Sounds as though Granny was fairly treated.
The senior citizen passenger deserved to be arrested. Some people are under the false impression that a senior citizen cannot be dangerous, or violent. A few years ago, in Brooklyn, N.Y., there was a senior citizen who was 99 years old,who survived genocide during World War Two. He was living on the second floor of a building near Maimonides Hospital, in Brooklyn; a Physician lived downstairs. The senior noticed that there was a car blocking the driveway of his building. He knew that the Physician needed to get his car in and out of that driveway, as he made frequent trips to and from the hospital, during the day. He came out of his home, and politely told the driver to move his car, explaining that a Doctor needed to get out of his driveay.. The driver was an 83 year old Russian immigrant. He did not like the 99 year old telling him to move. Then, he took the club (which he used to lock his steering wheel), and viciously attacked the 99 year old, breaking his nose, and causing other injuries. The violent, 83 year old was arrested and charged with first degree assault. The charge was later dropped to second degree assault. However, I doubt if that violent, piece of garbage spent one day in jail.
In 2003, there was another incident involving seniors in Florida. They both went to the movies with their wives (separately, as they didn’t know each other). The older man, who was 83, was a little slow in comprehending how much the movietickets were. All of a sudden, the wife from another couple stated sarcastically “Don’t you know how much it is; the cashier told you that it was $10.00”. At that point, the 83 year old stated “OH, SHUTUP”. The 79 year old husband of that woman didn’t like the 83 year old saying that, so he grabbed him and punched him. The 83 year old fell backwards, hit his head on the concrete, went into a coma and died. The 79 year old was charged with second degree murder, and the case went to trial. Unfortunately, one of the jurors felt sorry for the defendant, because of his age, and refused to convict him. Thus, the trial ended in a hung jury. Instead of being retried again, the defendant pleaded guilty to a lesser charge, and only served six months in jail, plus was placed on probation for six years, for killing someone!
Last, in 2014, a senior citizen, who was a retired police Captain, from Tampa, FL, shot a younger patron dead in the movies, in front of his wife, because the younger patron was texting on his telephone, and allegedly threw popcorn at him, and cursed him out. The trial of that retired cop, is supposed to start later this year, assumed there are no further delays.
The point that I’m trying to make is that violent behavior by senior citizens, is very prevalent. It should never be excused. The grandma at the airport deserved to be arrested, and booked into jail. Believe me, the next time, she will think twice about striking a TSA agent, or anyone else.
“8 ounce bottle of hand gel from Bath and Body Works”
Some of you might be forgetting that bottle likely costs more than some United basic economy tickets.
No word on whether granny got her gel back?
Not all heroes wear capes….