Tucson man wouldn’t deescalate on flight, passenger says

The bite didn’t break Mejia’s skin, but left an imprint, O’Lenick said.

Eventually, flight attendants gave O’Lenick and Mejia zip-tie restraints to secure Lundeen. O’Lenick said he was hoping that would calm the passenger, but he was “determined” to resist.

As he continued to struggle, O’Lenick said they used duct tape to keep him from trying to bite people.

O’Lenick said he and Mejia tried to calm Lundeen down throughout the encounter.

“But nothing seemed to work,” O’Lenick said. “We just couldn’t seem to get through to him.”

O’Lenick said that for him and Mejia, the incident was “significant” as the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon approaches. In the chaos of the moment, he said, it wasn’t clear what had prompted the outburst or what would calm the situation.

O’Lenick said he was happy they were able to prevent Lundeen from further hurting himself or others and peacefully hand him off to law enforcement.

“We did everything we could to be aware, and to be as kind as we could to this gentleman,” O’Lenick said. “It was an intense situation, and we were trying to do what we could to de-escalate.”

Their flight was scheduled to land around 11 p.m. But between the detour to Baltimore, and multiple plane cleanings — at some point in the fracas, O’Lenick said Lundeen’s arm was injured and blood got on the seats — they landed around 3 a.m.

“I was like, ‘Thank God we’re home,’” O’Lenick said.

Lundeen, a Tucson real estate broker, was released Sept. 4 and has a trial set for Oct. 19 in Maryland. The FBI told Baltimore news station WMAR-2 that it was conducting interviews and weighing whether to file federal charges in connection with the incident.