A Tucson, Arizona real estate agent has lost his job after allegedly attacking a fellow passenger during an American Airlines flight from Dallas, Texas, to Newark, New Jersey, on Thursday.
Layne Arthur Lundeen, 67, is accused of assaulting the man seated beside him, biting people and shouting disturbing language before other passengers restrained him with zip ties and duct tape, according to a Fox 5 report published Tuesday.
The flight made an emergency landing in Baltimore, where authorities took Lundeen into custody. His employer, Long Realty, fired him shortly afterward.
Two passengers who helped subdue Lundeen described the sudden shift in his behavior. Juan Mejia, a retired law enforcement officer, said the cabin went from calm to chaotic in an instant.
“Just like a light switch, all of a sudden, it went from quiet to yelling and chaos. I turned around to look, and the poor gentleman that was sitting next to him in the aisle seat, the individual had his hands around his neck and was, like, assaulting him,” Mejia said.
Mejia and fellow passenger Richard Olenick moved in to help the man being attacked and restrain Lundeen. Video captured afterward appeared to show Lundeen still yelling at other passengers even after being restrained.
The passenger who was attacked has been identified as Messianic rabbi and author Jonathan Cahn, who told the New York Post that Lundeen screamed at him that “Jesus is bulls–t.”
“I was the unidentified passenger and I was actually attacked, 30,000 feet in the sky. I was attacked on that plane,” Cahn said. He added he had “never seen someone change in a split second from light to dark as I saw then, as if something had taken him over. He went from the friendliest guy in the world to this dark person.”
Long Realty, the Tucson-based agency that employed Lundeen, said his alleged conduct was “wholly inconsistent with the professionalism, integrity, compassion, and respect for others” it expects from its staff.
