An American woman identified as Sarah Maria Beach was arrested after allegedly throwing coffee at passengers and attacking a federal air marshal on a Delta Air Lines flight from London to Salt Lake City.
Citing U.S. district court documents filed on Friday, SFGate wrote that Beach, 45, was arrested on misdemeanor assault charges and accused of throwing coffee at other passengers on the flight, repeatedly running up and down the aisle and toppling a beverage cart, and jumping on an air marshal’s back and “[placing] her hands on his head, neck, and jawline.”
A passenger on the flight, London resident Martin Nicholls, spoke to KSL.com , recalling Sarah Beach’s alleged outburst on the Delta flight. As he was sitting across the aisle to Beach, he was able to have a conversation with her, as she supposedly told him that she has “a lot going on in her life.” According to Nicholls, Beach got increasingly worked up as she continued relating her story, even raising her voice and shouting at some points.
“At one point she stood up and she was drinking coffee and she literally just threw the whole thing — not the cup, the coffee — and it hit the ceiling, it was going down the walls. It went over probably about six or seven passengers, some, almost, to the other side of the plane.”
Nicholls added that Sarah Beach was then approached by an air marshal seated next to him and was “initially calm” when he and a second air marshal began monitoring the situation. While Beach remained cooperative when she was accompanied twice to the plane’s bathroom, she allegedly attacked the first air marshal while she was making her third escorted trip to the lavatory. Fellow passenger Nicholls recalled seeing her sprint from one end of the plane to the next, causing an even bigger disruption.
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“Everyone’s becoming very concerned because, I thought, we’re at 30-odd thousand feet over the sea. What if she tried to open the door? She couldn’t get to the back door but then she ran again,” he recalled.
Nicholls told KSL.com that he was able to subdue Beach before flight attendants took her to the back of the plane for the rest of the trip.
The alleged incident involving Sarah Beach is not the first time in recent months that a passenger aboard a Delta flight has been in the news for supposedly aggressive behavior. As previously reported by the Inquisitr , a woman identified as Susan Peirez was thrown off a Delta flight in February after she had allegedly thrown a tantrum and screamed obscenities at an attendant because she was seated next to a young mother and her “crying” baby. The incident reportedly got Peirez suspended from her job with the New York State Council on the Arts, as also noted by Newsweek .
Meanwhile, Sarah Beach was arraigned Friday in U.S. district court and was ordered to undergo a mental health evaluation. U.S. Attorney’s Office spokeswoman Melodie Rydalch said that Beach could potentially serve a sentence of up to a year in federal prison if she is convicted.