Tuesday, May 13, 2008
When pilots are stabbed to death and flight attendants are taken to the hospital in ambulances, the skies are out of control.
Sep 7, 1999 | On Dec. 16, 1997, aboard US Airways flight 38 bound for Baltimore from Los Angeles, Dean Trammel, a muscular 200-pound college football player, began wandering the aisle, tapping passengers on the shoulder with a pillow. "Touch me and you'll live forever," he said, offering his own version of eternal salvation. "We're all going to go to heaven." Some passengers were visibly irritated. Others became afraid.
Flight attendant Renee Sheffer, a former psychiatric nurse, instantly recognized that the passenger was experiencing a psychotic episode. Sheffer knew what to do. She didn't confront him physically, and she didn't rebuke him. Instead, the 12-year flight attendant calmly guided the passenger -- who had begun proclaiming that he was Jesus Christ -- to the rear galley, away from passengers, whose complaints were becoming increasingly more vocal. She spoke in a soothing voice and managed, or so it seemed, to get him to relax. He closed his eyes, knelt on the carpet and began a mumbling, nonsensical prayer.
Then he grabbed her breast.
She recoiled.
"I'm sorry!" he said.
Suddenly, his demeanor changed from apologetic to purposeful. "I need to bless the pilots," he said. "I need to deliver a message to them."
Despite Sheffer's pleas, Trammel headed up the aisle toward the cockpit. The veteran flight attendant understood what could result should a mentally disturbed passenger -- especially a physically powerful one -- breach the cockpit door. She immediately grabbed the phone. "A male passenger is coming to try to get into the cockpit," she said. "You better prepare yourselves."
A quick-thinking first-class flight attendant blocked the cockpit door with a service cart. But when Trammel approached and insisted he be let in, the two got into a tussle. The flight attendant was shoved to the floor.
By now, Sheffer had arrived. Once again she tried to calm Trammel. There was a brief argument as he insisted on being let into the cockpit, then she was able to convince him to return to the rear of the plane. At some point, however, Trammel became enraged. With a sudden swipe of his arm, he flung Sheffer's 114-pound body across three rows of seats. She crashed into the rear bulkhead and slid like a rag doll to the airplane floor.
Having witnessed the attack, a U.S. Marines MP and two off-work US Airways pilots wrestled Trammel to the ground. A fourth male passenger jumped in to help. The pilots obtained handcuffs. Someone grabbed seat-belt extensions and Trammel, still thrashing, clawing and blabbering, was finally tied up by his wrists, elbows, ankles, knees and legs. The plane landed with the two off-duty pilots sitting on top of him.
During the melee, Trammel had kicked Sheffer into an exit door and repeatedly bit the men who were trying to restrain him. According to witnesses, blood was splattered everywhere. Two of the men sustained bite wounds and cuts. And Sheffer suffered internal bleeding, kidney and bladder trauma, spinal trauma, a separated shoulder, a torn meniscus in her right knee, bruises on her back and stomach, cuts and abrasions. Later, she would suffer from post-traumatic stress.
When flight 38 finally landed in Baltimore, Sheffer was rushed by ambulance to a hospital. Trammel was taken into custody by police. He was released the same night and later scheduled to appear in court to face charges of aggravated assault and interference with a flight crew.
Despite admitting to the FBI that he had taken LSD before the flight, and despite the physical and mental damage inflicted upon flight attendant Sheffer, Trammel never went to prison. District Judge Catherine Blake found the defendant guilty of assault and reckless endangerment of an aircraft but nevertheless ruled he was not criminally responsible for his actions because he was "mentally ill" and had experienced a "psychotic episode." He was slapped with a $1,500 punitive fine (which, according to Sheffer, he has yet to pay), three years' probation and 150 hours of community service, he was forced to undergo psychiatric treatment and, for a three-year period that is still under way, he is required to obtain written permission from an airline before boarding one of its flights.
As a result of the attack, Renee Sheffer was forced to undergo three separate operations. Later this fall, after nearly two years of recuperation, she will finally return to work at US Airways. But the skies won't be as friendly as she once believed them to be. She worries about being victimized in another in-flight attack.
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