An Ohio man who groped two flight attendants and punched a third before being duct-taped to his seat amid jeers from fellow passengers was sentenced on Tuesday to 60 days in jail. Parts of the episode on a Frontier Airlines flight from Philadelphia to Miami last summer were recorded on video. It was among many altercations on airline flights between service workers and angry customers that have received widespread publicity during the pandemic. In February, the assailant, Maxwell Berry, 23, of Norwalk, Oh.,, pleaded guilty in federal court in Miami to three counts of assault. In addition to the jail term, he was fined $2,500 and ordered to pay more than $1,500 in restitution, the New York Times reports.
Berry’s lawyer, Jason Kreiss, argued that he should not go to jail for the crime, saying that what he had done that day was out of character and that he had already suffered the severe punishment of damage to his reputation. Jordan Galarza, the flight attendant he struck, called the 60-day sentence “a disgusting miscarriage of justice.” Galarza said Berry "made an enemy of everyone on that flight.” His duct-taping “looked a bit barbaric,” Galarza said, but “the people on that aircraft saw justice happen — more than what we saw today.”
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