Airport Screener Roughs Up 83 Year Old In Wheelchair
Eight days ago Sally Moon and her sister took their mother Bernice “Bea” Boart to the airport so she could fly out to visit their other sister for a month. Bea, a survivor of breast cancer surgery in 1997, has been wheelchair-bound since 1999 when a fall broke her hip; furthermore, she suffered a major stroke in 2004 that caused ementia and is under strict dorctor’s orders not to stand without assistance or her walker. She carried a special orthopedic card to alert airport security that she has a metal plate in her hip. Sally’s sister did not have concource clearance so Sally was the one that pushed her mother to the special security screening site in the wheelchair. Sally had been assured by Frontier Airlines and Transportation Security Administration staffers that screeners would not requre her mother to get out of her chair for the security check, so she turned to put her mothers bags on the x-ray belt.
By the time she turned back, she discovered that her mother had been picked out for further screening was out of the chair and was “hobbling” through a glass-walled corridor. There were no grab bars and nothing for her mother to hang on to. As she instinctively reached out to help her mother she was warned, “Don’t touch her!”
Bogart, who is also hard of hearing, was allowed to sit briefly, but the screener soon instructed her to stand again and lift her arms, according to Moon. She then reportedly lifted Bogart’s arms because the elderly woman couldn’t, due to her earlier breast cancer surgery.
Moon says she was told to sit across the room “or else” when she continued to protest.
After the “prolonged search,” the pair was cleared to continue to their gate and Moon put her “shocked” mother on the flight to Tennessee for a month’s visit with Bogart’s youngest daughter.
An angry Moon attempted to complain to Denver’s TSA management, but was told to make her complaint to the national office. Supervisors would not tell her the name of the screener who had made boarding her mother so difficult.
“I don’t know if she thought my mom had a bomb in her Depends or what,” Moon said.[“Airport screener ‘roughs up’ woman, 83, in wheelchair”(WorldNetDaily)]
Once again, this is your airport security at work. Doesn’t this make you feel safer, knowing this woman won’t be endangering your flight?
Hat tip to Pandagon.
tags: Transportation Security Administration, Frontier Airlines, WorldNetDaily
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on April 3, 2006 at 5:54 pm
Big Dog said:
Remember, if you pick a likely suspect (a middle eastern male between the ages of 18 and 45) you would be profiling…..
TSA= Thousands Standing Around