JetBlue Attendant Held on Bail as His Lawyer Offers Details of Flight
By ANDY NEWMAN AND MICK MEENAN
Steven Slater, the JetBlue flight attendant who activated an exit chute on a just-landed plane at Kennedy International Airport after a dispute with a passenger Monday and slid to notoriety, did not post the $2,500 bail set by a judge at his arraignment Tuesday morning and remains in custody.
At the arraignment on felony charges of reckless endangerment and criminal mischief in a packed room in the basement of criminal court in Queens, Mr. Slater’s court-appointed lawyer, Howard Turman, said that Mr. Slater’s activation of the slide was not reckless. He said Mr. Slater followed the proper procedure for activating the slide, checking out the window first to make sure no one was on the tarmac who could be struck by it.
Mr. Turman, of the Legal Aid Society, offered an account of the flight, JetBlue 1052 from Pittsburgh, that he said justified Mr. Slater’s actions. He told reporters aid that on the ground in Pittsburgh, a female passenger had been verbally and physically abusive to Mr. Slater when he intervened as she squabbled with a male passenger over access to the overhead luggage compartment.
“The woman initially at Pittsburgh slammed the overhead into his head,” Mr. Turman said of Mr. Slater.
A passenger on the flight, Greg Kanczes, said that he saw a large, fresh-looking gash on Mr. Slater’s forehead at the beginning of the flight. “It was about and inch-and-half long, and it was a big red mark or cut,” Mr. Kanczes said by phone Tuesday. “There was no bandage.”
In previous accounts offered by the authorities, Mr. Slater’s main altercation with the passenger had come at the end of the flight, not the beginning, with the passenger pulling a bag out of the overhead compartment that struck Mr. Slater in the head. The version offered by Mr. Turman indicates a longer-brewing conflict between the two parties.
Mr. Turman said that on the ground at Kennedy, the female passenger “was outraged and cursing” at Mr. Slater, who “wanted to avoid a conflict.”
Law enforcement officials said that after the passenger cursed at Mr. Slater, he grabbed the intercom, cursed her out, bid passengers goodbye, grabbed a beer, and activated the inflatable exit chute.
When asked why Mr. Slater chose to go avoid the conflict by taking the emergency slide, Mr. Turman replied, “It was right there.”
