Drunken man on airplane slaps another woman's 19-month old son, and calls the baby the "n-word"

Plot Device · Feb 19, 2013

Am I allowed to ask a shitty question??

And I mean a REALLY shitty question??

Q.) Was this guy pro-life, I wonder??

(yeah, that was shitty)

quicklime · Feb 19, 2013

missesdash said:
This post made me realize I haven't encountered a baby in a movie theater since I left the states. In fact, no children at all unless it's a kid's movie. And I go to different theaters at different times and see a lot of types of films.

side note, we took our kids to the movies last week, Identity Theft (mediocre, but an ok afternoon). They were quieter than the giggly 20-somethings trying to impress one another, or the high school kids in the back row.

a lot depends on the kid, and their behavior

Plot Device · Feb 19, 2013

quicklime said:
side note, we took our kids to the movies last week, Identity Theft (mediocre, but an ok afternoon). They were quieter than the giggly 20-somethings trying to impress one another, or the high school kids in the back row.

a lot depends on the kid, and their behavior

You took your kids to an R-rated film??

thebloodfiend · Feb 19, 2013

Can we just ban obnoxious people from flying, period? And overweight people, who intrude upon my seat? And people prone to throwing up—because listening to people throw up makes me feel like throwing up. And couples who like to make-out, because watching their happiness raises my anxiety levels and makes me feel horrible for not having time to date anymore. And people with toxic BO levels who haven't showered in days. And people who think I want to have conversations with them.

Why do I have to sit next to those people on planes and buses and in theaters? So annoying.

On a serious note, I can understand that crying babies are stressful. But so are any number of other things. I, personally, find the BO and seat sharing much more problematic than any crying baby. That is what headphones are for.

quicklime · Feb 19, 2013

edit: re: R-rated films
quite a few of them already....nothing they are going to encounter there they won't on the bus on the way in to school, but at least we can straighten them out afterwards when we know what they saw.

Once we got cable I was watching plenty of R-rated films as well, and I have yet to become a complete sociopath or sexual deviant, although I continue to try

quicklime · Feb 19, 2013

thebloodfiend said:
I, personally, find the BO and seat sharing much more problematic than any crying baby. That is what headphones are for.

we had a woman sitting in front of us one flight and fanning her armpits, constantly, with a damp washcloth....she smelled so bad I thought I might get a headache (I'm not a puker). I have never, literally EVER smelled a person who was worse than her, and we were stuck in a tube directly behind her as she waved her stink at us straight from her sleeveless top.

one of the nastiest things in my life.

Katrina S. Forest · Feb 19, 2013

Shadow_Ferret said:
You do NOT think its possible for babies to be obnoxious? Seriously?

As far as the parents thinking it is cute, I have no other explanation for parents who subject their noisy little brat upon others.

If our children cried inconsolably, we had the decency to remove them from whatever situation we were in: restaurants, stores, social gatherings, whatever it was. Again, I understand its a plane and during takeoffs and landings there's little that can be done, but in general, in other situations, yeah, we leave with the child.

I expect no less from others.

To me, obnoxious implies that the person is capable of not being annoying and chooses to engage in the annoying behavior anyway. Babies cannot stop themselves from crying when they're in pain. So I don't see them as obnoxious.

Older kids? Totally different story.

I know my children's limits and in general, we don't take them places we know they're going to be pressed beyond those limits. But if we want to take our kids on vacation or visit relatives who live far away, I don't think we should be barred from doing that (or left only with the option of driving 20 hours with two young kids) just because they may cry on the plane and it may bother someone.

Personally, I can think of way more annoying things to hear than a baby's cry. If we're banning annoying sounds from planes, I've got a list.

thebloodfiend · Feb 19, 2013

quicklime said:
we had a woman sitting in front of us one flight and fanning her armpits, constantly, with a damp washcloth....she smelled so bad I thought I might get a headache (I'm not a puker). I have never, literally EVER smelled a person who was worse than her, and we were stuck in a tube directly behind her as she waved her stink at us straight from her sleeveless top.

one of the nastiest things in my life.

My god. I can't top that. I only have a second hand story:

A friend of mine was catching the bus to school. A woman boarded and literally lost her shit. My friend felt so bad for the woman, but she could no longer sit on that bus with that smell.

I say smells beat sound any day of the week. I've never heard a sound (unless it's someone throwing up) that makes me want to throw up.

Shadow_Ferret · Feb 19, 2013

Plot Device said:
Am I allowed to ask a shitty question??

And I mean a REALLY shitty question??

Q.) Was this guy pro-life, I wonder??

(yeah, that was shitty)

I can only suss that he was an angry, ignorant bigot. Anything else is speculative.

kkbe · Feb 19, 2013

re: yukkiness. . . the worst for me was more the smelly pit variety. Rome. St. Peter's Square on Easter Sunday, waiting for the Pope to speak. Thousands and thousands of people were there. It must've be 80 degrees, getting hotter by the minute, and we were standing for an hour, wedged in like sardines. Directly in front of me stood a woman wearing a fur coat for some reason. My nose was no more than a couple of inches from that ratty fur coat. I tried to tilt my head up but she smelled so bad, I could not escape her stench, nor the throng of people pressing in on me from all sides, nor the rising heat, nor the interminable wait, and I began to feel ill, and believed I was about to faint, or puke, or puke and then faint. . .

There is a happy ending to my story, but I don't want to highjack the thread anymore than I already have.

Shadow_Ferret · Feb 19, 2013

Katrina S. Forest said:
To me, obnoxious implies that the person is capable of not being annoying and chooses to engage in the annoying behavior anyway. Babies cannot stop themselves from crying when they're in pain. So I don't see them as obnoxious.

...

Personally, I can think of way more annoying things to hear than a baby's cry. If we're banning annoying sounds from planes, I've got a list.

I guess to me obnoxious is a behavior as viewed by the eye of the beholder. Obnoxious is obnoxious whether it can or can't be helped. So yes, to me babies can be obnoxious, annoying, unbearable, disgusting...

And to me, a crying baby is worse than finger nails on a blackboard, a constantly barking dog, or a continuous high pitched metallic screech combined.

missesdash · Feb 19, 2013

Shadow_Ferret said:
I guess to me obnoxious is a behavior as viewed by the eye of the beholder. Obnoxious is obnoxious whether it can or can't be helped. So yes, to me babies can be obnoxious, annoying, unbearable, disgusting...

And to me, a crying baby is worse than finger nails on a blackboard, a constantly barking dog, or a continuous high pitched metallic screech combined.

There are different kinds of baby cries. There are the "this thing was born five minutes ago" that are pretty quiet and pathetic. Then the "this thing just learned to scream" which is really fucking grating because it's this throaty, wet noise. And then there is the "normal baby" which isn't as bad, but can be. And last but not least there is the toddler "I am crying because I want to cry" which is very deliberate and so kind of maddening.

All of these have a "sick child" version, obviously. It has phlegm or if they're very young, sounds like someone being murdered.

But hey, at least you don't have to ride a plane with these.

I don't know the point of this post.
I should probably go write.

Shadow_Ferret · Feb 19, 2013

Yeah. Good advice. I should write too.

Ken · Feb 19, 2013

... saw an episode of M*A*S*H yrs back.
Hawkeye was in back of a jeep with a Korean woman.
Enemy up ahead, he signaled for her to keep her baby from crying.
She strangled it. Hawkeye was devastated.

--------------------------

ps Yep. Babies can be a tad annoying when they cry.
The thing to do, though, is to make funny faces.
Then they quit crying and laugh.
"Look at the silly man, MaMa." :-D

Plot Device · Feb 19, 2013

I remember the episode and I was thinking of it this morning because of this thread. Forgive me, but I am going to correct you because you got the details wrong.

Ken said:
... saw an episode of M*A*S*H yrs back.
Hawkeye was in back of a jeep with a Korean woman.
Enemy up ahead, he signaled for her to keep her baby from crying.
She strangled it. Hawkeye was devastated.

--------------------------

ps Yep. Babies can be a tad annoying when they cry.
The thing to do, though, is to make funny faces.
Then they quit crying and laugh.
"Look at the silly man, MaMa." :-D

It wasn't a jeep, it was a 72 passenger yellow school bus, (48 passengers if they are adult passengers, 72 if they are kiddies) and the bus was painted miitary green. The bus was mostly full of Korean peasants being evacuated from a zone where the enemy had broken through the lines. Hawkeye was one of maybe 3 Americans on board the bus. They stopped the bus, cut the engine, and every on the bus had to remain deathly quiet because there were North Koreans in the area. So everyone sat on the bus perfectly still, staring straight ahead, waiting almost breathlessly for the North Koreans to pass by. Their bus was "hidden" in the woods because of the green paint. They could all hear the voices of the North Korean soldiers passing right near by. Hawkeye at first told the story that it was a chicken on the lady's lap, and the chicken was cackling loudly and was going to give away their position. So she strangled the chicken and then it sat there dead upon her lap. But then Hawkeye recalled the real truth that he couldn't bear to recall: it was a baby on her lap. Everyone on the bus was silently looking at the lady with the crying baby, willing for the baby to shut up. But she could not silence the child. Hawkeye was the only one there who dared to VOICE his terror over the cryiong baby's noise. She responded to Hawkeye by fiercely bearing down on the child and she wound up smothering the baby, and it died. And she knew she had just killed her own baby and sat there silently weeping with her own dead baby in her arms. And Hawkeye recalled what had really happened and he shrieked and wailed in horror over what he wouldn't let himself remember.

The following YouTube video is actually very crappy in quality. But it's all I could find. The video is very edited down and doesn't reveal that it was a school bus.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n89nnR1MdJ0

Monkey · Feb 19, 2013

Ken said:
ps Yep. Babies can be a tad annoying when they cry.
The thing to do, though, is to make funny faces.
Then they quit crying and laugh.
"Look at the silly man, MaMa." :-D

Not always, of course. Try it with a colicky baby sometime. If a baby is in actual pain, good luck with that. There are times when the M*A*S*H solution is the only one that would work, and I think we'll all agree that that's utterly unacceptable.

Reasoning with the baby doesn't work, either, and any sort of hitting/punishing is likely to make them scream louder.

Heh... reminds me of a story my husband still teases me about. When my two youngest were still very small, we made an eight-hour trip to my hometown to see my parents for Christmas. During this trip, I traded my mother (who owned a pet shop) my pet ball python for a baby bunny rabbit. The rabbit's cage was too big for the back seat, and my oldest son (who was MUCH larger than me) was in the front seat, so I ended up sitting between the two babies with a live rabbit in my lap.

So... you guessed it. At some point, the little ones had had enough of being in the car. They both started crying. I tried everything to calm them, but even an adorable baby bunny couldn't a thing to help. Nothing sets off a mother's nerves worse than the cry of her own offspring - we're biologically hardwired to respond to it - and here I had it in stereo, trapped, with no escape in sight.

After a much-too-prolonged baby-cry torture session, my husband called back to the backseat, "How's the rabbit doing?" To which I responded in an anguished whine, "He has eeeeeeaaaaarrrrrsss."

My husband and my oldest both laughed, but I was serious. Having ears was a serious liability in that backseat just then.

I've always been quick to remove any child of mine that started to cry from public view/earshot ASAP... but there are times when that's just not possible. At such times, understanding is warranted, even if it's unpleasant.

frimble3 · Feb 19, 2013

I'd rather have a loud kid than a loud drunk: at least the kid is a work in progress and his social skills may improve.
And, in response to an earlier post, airlines do try to weed out the obvious drunks. If someone borderline gets through, and has that one over his limit while in the air, well, it's hard to get rid of him. Although planes have landed early because of drunk and disorderly passengers before (then the other passengers complain because they were delayed.)

Perspective, flying folks: any flight you live through, uninjured, is basically a good flight. And if the plane starts to nosedive, or men with guns try to take over, the screaming from the adults will muffle the cries of any children aboard.
So by grateful for aerodynamics, and that the crying child that everyone's glaring at isn't yours.

NicoleJLeBoeuf · Feb 19, 2013

Y'know, the whole "was it because he was drunk" portion of the conversation reminds me of something someone told me about domestic abusers. They'll say "I couldn't help it, she just made me so mad--" but it will be very clear to the discerning brain that this is a damned lie because the abuser only ever uses physical violence in consequence-free situations, or when their victim is someone they're confident can't fight back. If it were just a blanket anger-management problem, they'd have hauled off and hit their boss, or a customer, or grocery clerk, long ago.

Ditto this particular racist abuser: When he gets drunk, does he hit just anyone? Has he been in jail for assault? Does he get into bar fights? Or does he just use cover of drunkenness to "excuse" physical violence on those he perceives as helpless, those who are smaller than he, those not in a position (so he thinks) to fight back? If the latter, well, sure, drunkenness does relax the inhibitions, but I suspect those inhibitions aren't purely about anger management.

As for obnoxious behavior on public transit. I save my ire for those who ought to know better. Screaming infants are just being infants. Kicking children don't always know better. But that parental figure who encouraged the child to play a slap-faster card game on a seat-back tray table whose seat I was not allowed to get out of because we were waiting for the customs agent to finish with our train car? Totally going to hell.

Ken · Feb 20, 2013

Plot Device said:
...it was a 72 passenger yellow school bus, (48 passengers if they are adult passengers, 72 if they are kiddies) and the bus was painted miitary green. The bus was mostly full of Korean peasants being evacuated from a zone where the enemy had broken through the lines. Hawkeye was one of maybe 3 Americans on board the bus. They stopped the bus, cut the engine, and every on the bus had to remain deathly quiet because there were North Koreans in the area. So everyone sat on the bus perfectly still, staring straight ahead, waiting almost breathlessly for the North Koreans to pass by. Their bus was "hidden" in the woods because of the green paint. They could all hear the voices of the North Korean soldiers passing right near by. Hawkeye at first told the story that it was a chicken on the lady's lap, and the chicken was cackling loudly and was going to give away their position. So she strangled the chicken and then it sat there dead upon her lap. But then Hawkeye recalled the real truth that he couldn't bear to recall: it was a baby on her lap. Everyone on the bus was silently looking at the lady with the crying baby, willing for the baby to shut up. But she could not silence the child. Hawkeye was the only one there who dared to VOICE his terror over the cryiong baby's noise. She responded to Hawkeye by fiercely bearing down on the child and she wound up smothering the baby, and it died. And she knew she had just killed her own baby and sat there silently weeping with her own dead baby in her arms. And Hawkeye recalled what had really happened and he shrieked and wailed in horror over what he wouldn't let himself remember.

The following YouTube video is actually very crappy in quality. But it's all I could find. The video is very edited down and doesn't reveal that it was a school bus.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n89nnR1MdJ0

... intense clip.
Thnx for the correction and details.
Wouldn't mind watching that episode again.

Monkey said:
Not always, of course.

... quite true, but the "funny faces" approach is a pretty good one even so.
Have got my nephews and nieces to hush with that a number of times.

That's funny about the rabbit ears remark :-D

Yep. Gotta have patience with babies.
They're our future. Goes for everyone.

William Haskins · Jan 6, 2014

Man gets eight months in prison for slapping toddler on plane

ATLANTA — A former aerospace executive who slapped a crying toddler on an airplane and used a racial slur against the child, who is black, received an eight-month prison sentence on Monday for an incident his attorney blamed on his alcoholism.

Joe Rickey Hundley, who apologized in court to the child's mother, was accused of striking the 19-month-old boy in the face on board a Delta Air Lines flight from Minneapolis to Atlanta last February.

Hundley pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor assault charge in October. Prosecutors had sought a six-month prison sentence, but the federal judge opted for a stiffer punishment.

"I'm very sorry," Hundley told the child's mother during the court hearing in Atlanta. "I made the most terrible day in my life much worse for myself and others."

http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2014/01/06/22203402-man-gets-eight-months-in-prison-for-slapping-toddler-

Haggis · Jan 6, 2014

William Haskins said:
Man gets eight months in prison for slapping toddler on plane

ATLANTA — A former aerospace executive who slapped a crying toddler on an airplane and used a racial slur against the child, who is black, received an eight-month prison sentence on Monday for an incident his attorney blamed on his alcoholism.

Joe Rickey Hundley, who apologized in court to the child's mother, was accused of striking the 19-month-old boy in the face on board a Delta Air Lines flight from Minneapolis to Atlanta last February.

Hundley pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor assault charge in October. Prosecutors had sought a six-month prison sentence, but the federal judge opted for a stiffer punishment.

"I'm very sorry," Hundley told the child's mother during the court hearing in Atlanta. "I made the most terrible day in my life much worse for myself and others."

http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2014/01/06/22203402-man-gets-eight-months-in-prison-for-slapping-toddler-

"I'm very sorry," Hundley told the child's mother during the court hearing in Atlanta. "I made the most terrible day in my life much worse for myself and others."

If it's true that he was flying to Atlanta to remove his son from life support, that could certainly make it the worst day of his life. But even in his apology, he seems more concerned that he made his day worse--not that he slapped a child, shocked a mother and used racial epithets. I'm glad the judge moved the goal posts on this one.

William Haskins · Jan 6, 2014

isn't it amazing in this nation of puritans that a drug can be legally purchased (and cheaply!) that, even in small doses, can contribute to this level of psychotic and violent behavior...

Haggis · Jan 6, 2014

William Haskins said:
isn't it amazing in this nation of puritans that a drug can be legally purchased (and cheaply!) that, even in small doses, can contribute to this level of psychotic and violent behavior...

I served my time as a beertender when finishing up school. It mostly seemed to me that the folks who were dickwads while sober became worse when drunk. Those who were normally sweethearts were the ones who, when drunk, would put their arm around you and say, "I luuuurrrve, yuo budie." Of course there were exceptions both ways. But in the three years I tended bar full time, I never saw an adult slap a toddler.

Drink may have loosened this dude up, but IMO, at heart he's an asshole. Unlike the Puritans who, if I remember correctly, loved their beer.

Alessandra Kelley · Jan 6, 2014

Haggis said:
I served my time as a beertender when finishing up school. It mostly seemed to me that the folks who were dickwads while sober became worse when drunk. Those who were normally sweethearts were the ones who, when drunk, would put their arm around you and say, "I luuuurrrve, yuo budie." Of course there were exceptions both ways. But in the three years I tended bar full time, I never saw an adult slap a toddler.

Drink may have loosened this dude up, but IMO, at heart he's an asshole. Unlike the Puritans who, if I remember correctly, loved their beer.

Beer, yes, Christmas pie, no.

Roxxsmom · Jan 6, 2014

Shadow_Ferret said:
Airplanes should have crying rooms though.

The ones I've flown on lately don't even have more than one restroom. And of course, when the fasten seat belt sign is on, you couldn't get up and take the kid to a room anyway.

Babies and toddlers often cry on planes. Lots of loud, scary noises, the kids are restrained, sometimes for hours, they can't always be changed promptly when they're wet or poopy, and the changes in pressure can hurt their ears.

I have felt like crying on planes at times.

Though the last time this nervous flier was trapped on a plane that had some really scary turbulence (the kind where the wings flap like a bird's and the plane plummets repeatedly and the old woman sitting next to me was clutching her crucifix and praying under her breath, and some of the other passengers looking green about the gills), the toddler across the aisle who kept yelling "Whee!" and chortling gave me something to smile about.

Sitting next to a crying toddler or baby is one of the many discomforts associated with flying these days. Honestly, I'll take a crying, even poopy, toddler seat-mate over a belligerent, bigoted drunk, though.

And I could see how being drunk and bereaved could shorten someone's fuse, maybe make them lose it and start yelling, but it's not going to turn someone into a toddler-slapping bigot unless he already has those tendencies somewhere.

Drunken man on airplane slaps another woman's 19-month old son, and calls the baby the "n-word"

A woman said to write like a man.

all out of fucks to give

A woman said to write like a man.

Cory

all out of fucks to give

all out of fucks to give

Cory

Court Jester

Huh.

Court Jester

You can't sit with us!

Court Jester

A woman said to write like a man.

Is me.

Heckuva good sport

a work in progress

poet

Evil, undead Chihuahua

poet

Evil, undead Chihuahua

Sophipygian

Beastly Fido