Creep Playing "Footsie" Causes Flight To Make An Emergency Landing

Photo by Robert Alexander/Getty Images

Southwest Flight Makes Emergency Landing Following Unwanted Game Of “Footsie”

A Texas creep harassed and played “footsie” with a random woman aboard a Southwest Airlines flight this week, later screaming at attendants who confronted him and prompting the LA-to-Dallas flight to be diverted.

29-year-old Justin Riley Brafford boarded Flight 859 on Tuesday and sat in a middle seat, where he put his arm on the leg of a woman sitting in the aisle seat, according to a federal complaint viewed by Dallas News.

The woman told the FBI that she continued to lean away from the creep trying to ignore him throughout the flight, but he got closer to her and began “playing footsie” with her, according to the report.

As the flight went on things continued to get weirder as he asked her personal questions, including her name and whether she would be staying alone in a hotel. When the woman turned down his invitation for a date, he whispered, “Don’t f*** with me,” she claims.

After these incidents, the woman asked to be moved to another seat on the plane, but Brafford continued to harass her and confronted her again, according to the complaint. When the flight attendant spoke to him, he wasn’t acting “like a normal person” and launched a profanity-laced tirade, according to the feds.

He seemed to go “from zero to sixty in nano-seconds,” the complaint says, leading a crew member to suspect he might have been high on drugs the whole time.

The flight attendant notified the pilot, who then diverted to Albuquerque where Brafford was taken into custody. He ended up telling investigators that he and the woman had been watching videos on her laptop and that he thought she was the one flirting with him, according to the complaint.

Later, Brafford admitted to using meth a day earlier and said he also had overdosed on heroin on Saturday, according to the complaint. He also revealed that God had been talking to him during the flight.

Justin remains in federal custody and faces a felony count of interference with a flight crew and a misdemeanor assault charge.

In a statement about the nightmare situation, Southwest said: “The safety and comfort of everyone on board every operating aircraft is our highest concern.”