MIAMI-DADE COUNTY, Fla. — An Alabama woman flying between San Juan and Atlanta now finds herself facing criminal charges in South Florida after authorities said she instigated a midair altercation.
Investigators with the Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office said it all happened at around 4:45 p.m. Monday aboard a Frontier Airlines jet. The crew diverted the plane to Miami International Airport enroute to Atlanta because of the dispute.
An MDSO arrest report states that the whole thing began when passenger Ebony Shyteria Harper, who turned 31 on Thursday, leaned on a passenger sitting in the last row as she queued to use the bathroom.
Deputies said when the passenger asked Harper, of Opelika, Alabama, to “move her arm from his back,” she then touched his face. After the man’s wife asked her to stop touching her husband, she touched the man’s wife, authorities said.
According to the report, that led the man’s wife to hit Harper and Harper to hit her back. Deputies said Harper then punched a woman “numerous times” in the face as the woman tried to break up the dispute.
All of this led to the diversion and to Harper’s arrest by MDSO deputies, the report states. Public flight tracking data shows the Airbus A321neo was on the ground at MIA for nearly three hours.
Authorities said the “victims did not have visible injuries” and that “all passengers were denied traveling.”
Deputies arrested Harper on charges of battery on a person 65 or older, a felony, and misdemeanor battery.
As of Tuesday morning, she was being held in the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center with a bond listed in online records as “to be set.”
Local 10 News contacted Frontier seeking comment on the incident.
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