Passengers removed from plane are released without charges

LINTHICUM, Md. (FOX 32 / AP) — Four people were removed from a Chicago-bound flight at Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport on Tuesday morning after a passenger reported what she believed was suspicious behavior, but they were released hours later without charges, officials said.

A passenger on Spirit Airlines Flight 969 was on his phone, watching a media report that caused the passenger next to him "some concern."

"I was actually right next to all of them," said passenger Jenna Farella.

She says she saw a woman taking a child into the bathroom while the plane was taxiing onto the runway.

"When she started ignoring the flight attendant, sayin m'am stop, m'am you have to sit down, you can't get out of your seat, that's when I started getting a little uncomfortable," Farella said.

A spokesman for the Maryland Transportation Authority says the woman with the child was actually heading to the back of the plane to alert authorities of the suspicious male passenger watching the news on his phone.

The flight crew then decided to return to the gate and the captain asked police to remove three men and a woman from the plane, he said.

All passengers were removed from the plane for a time, Spirit Airlines spokesman Stephen Schuler said in a statement, but once the Transportation Security Administration cleared the plane and luggage, the flight departed for Chicago's O'Hare International Airport after 9 a.m., he said. It had been scheduled to leave at 6 a.m.

All four of the removed passengers were released without charges after a few hours, Maryland Transportation Authority Police spokesman 1st Sgt. Jonathan Green said. He described them as a husband, wife and relative traveling together and a third man who was sitting near them, Green said. He said he did not know whether they decided to continue their journey.

"Two police officers came on and they went to the women and men that were next to me and said, 'are you guys with this woman? Are you traveling with her?' They were Middle Eastern and they said yes," Farella said.

David Rocca told The Associated Press in a telephone interview that he and fellow passengers were told that security officials would come on the plane and that they should stay seated. The 28-year-old Baltimore man said two men and a woman were taken off the flight first and that they took their carry-on bags off as well. He said officials returned to remove the fourth person, a man.

"They quietly stood up, removed their bags and followed the two officers off the plane," Rocca said.

"They did a sweep of the plane, they had the dog sniffing bags as we all got off the plane one by one. Then individually they let us back on," said passenger Tilesha Northern.

Rocca said the early-morning flight was about half-full. He said he was among half a dozen passengers who also were taken off the flight because they had connecting flights in Chicago that they would miss.

The head of the Chicago Council on American Islamic Relations is demanding an explanation from the airline.

"A Middle Eastern person watching news on their iPhone is not suspicious behavior. If that person were of a fairer skin, watching news on their iPhone would probably not be reported, so in this case it sounds like profiling of someone's phenotype," said Ahmed Rehab.