By Michelle Hunter
The Times-Picayune | The New Orleans Advocate
NEW ORLEANS — A belligerent and intoxicated Kansas woman bit and kicked the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office deputies who were forced to remove her from a recent Southwest Airlines flight that had to turn back to the gate at Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport because of her behavior, according to authorities.
Kamaryn Gibson’s arrest was recorded on video by several passengers of the May 29 flight. Four days later, sheriff’s office deputies arrested a married couple from Washington after they began fighting during a flight to New Orleans.
Gibson, 25, of Olathe, Kan., appeared to be intoxicated while aboard her flight, which was scheduled to depart New Orleans on Memorial Day evening, according to Capt. Jason Rivarde, spokesperson for the Sheriff’s Office.
She kept putting her feet up on the seat in front of her, kicking the passenger in that seat in the head. Gibson refused to take her feet down, according to authorities, leading the pilots to return the taxiing plane back to the gate, Rivarde said.
Sheriff’s office deputies tried to talk Gibson into leaving willingly, explaining that everyone would have to get off the plane or they’d be forced to remove her.
“She refused to exit the plane multiple times,” Rivarde said.
A round of applause can be heard in cell phone video as the deputies grab Gibson, pull her down the aisle and handcuff her.
“She began fighting with them and continued to fight them on the jet bridge and into the public seating area,” said Rivarde, who noted that Gibson bit one deputy on the thigh and kicked two others.
Gibson finally had to be restrained in a wheelchair and wheeled to the police office in the airport. She was arrested and booked with three counts of battery of a police officer, disturbing the peace while drunk, two counts of resisting an officer and criminal mischief, Rivarde said.
She was released May 30 from the Jefferson Parish Correctional Center in Gretna on a $6,000 bond.
Deputies think David Faulk, 52, and his wife, Shelly Mangini, 50, of Tacoma, Wash., were also intoxicated when they began screaming obscenities at one another during a flight to New Orleans on Alaska Airlines Friday evening, according to Rivarde.
Flight attendants separated the couple, but Mangini dashed back over to her husband and hit him several times with her elbow while spewing profanities, the Sheriff’s Office said. The crew tried escorting her to the rear of the plane, but she began kicking and hitting the walls.
That’s when flight attendants decided to restrain Mangini. Two other passengers helped put her into flex cuffs, Rivarde said. She spat on a passenger and continued to scream.
The airline asked deputies to meet the plane at the gate when it arrived just after 5 p.m. The other 119 passengers got off the plane before deputies took Mangini and Faulk off the flight, authorities said.
The husband and wife were arrested and booked with disturbing the peace while drunk and using offensive language in public. Mangini was also booked with domestic abuse battery, simple battery, simple criminal damage to property, possession of marijuana and illegal possession of a prescription medication, Rivarde said.
Bail for Faulk was set at $500, but he was released Saturday without paying because of crowding at the jail, court records said. Mangini was still being held without bail Monday.
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