Southwest Airline Passenger Arrested For Threatening To Kill Fellow Passengers

A woman was arrested and charged with threatening to kill her fellow passengers on a Southwest Airlines flight Saturday. The flight was headed to Sacramento, California, from Portland, Oregon.

A passenger on the flight filmed the incident and passed the footage on to KOVR, a CBS affiliate in Sacramento. That passenger said that the woman became irritated after a flight attendant reprimanded her for trying to smoke a cigarette in the bathroom.

The woman, Valerie Curbelo, 24, was arrested at the gate in Sacramento and booked on charges of making criminal threats, according to CBS News. Curbelo is from Sandy, Oregon.

“I will f---ng kill everyone on this plane,” yelled Curbelo in the video.

Curbelo reportedly pushed a flight attendant and had to be restrained by other passengers for the final 30 minutes of the flight after she was ordered back to her seat.

“The anxiety, yeah the anxiety,” said Curbelo to KOVR about why she had tried to smoke a cigarette on the plane and had lost her temper. “It was not me. It was not me.”

Southwest Airlines provided a statement to KOIN, a CBS affiliate in Portland.

“[Curbelo] violated federal laws by both smoking onboard an aircraft and by tampering with a smoke detector in an aircraft restroom,” said Southwest Airlines.