Police forcibly remove man from plane in Miami

ByCOURTNEY HAN ABCNews logo
Tuesday, April 24, 2018

An unruly passenger was arrested after he was shot with a stun gun and forcibly removed from a flight in Miami on Sunday.

The Chicago-bound American Airlines plane sat at a gate at Miami International Airport Sunday for more than an hour due to the disturbance, according to a statement from the airline.

Video posted on Twitter taken by another passenger shows a man, identified by authorities as Jacob Garcia of Chicago, getting held down and shot several times by a Taser held by one of three Miami-Dade police officers. Garcia asks why he is getting removed from the plane, and an officer responds: "You just assaulted a lady."

The incident began when Garcia allegedly touched a female passenger "without her permission" and then refused the crew's request that he move to another seat, according to a police report.

He allegedly was asked by crew and police to deplane, but instead clung to his seat, the police report said. An officer deployed a Taser after warning Garcia he was about to engage.

"Once law enforcement was on the aircraft, the passenger then became combative with the officers from the Miami-Dade Police Department. The same passenger was subsequently arrested," according to the airline.

All other passengers remained on the plane.

The flight departed an hour later than scheduled and reached Chicago's O'Hare airport early Monday morning.

ABC News' Ben Stein, Becky Perlow and Chad Murray contributed to this report.

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