An American man is being hailed as a hero after he helped subdue a disturbed passenger who tried to gain entrance to the cockpit during a Korean Air flight last week.
During a flight from Seoul to Seattle on Thursday, Geno Parente was asked by flight attendants to help them with a man who was wearing a plastic bag over his head and was pounding on the cockpit door, according to the New York Post.
The man was identified as Gyeong Jei Lee, a Korean native who now lives in Colorado.
The incident happened late during the lengthy trans-Pacific flight.
"That was my worst post-9/11 fear," Parente told The Post on Saturday, back home in San Diego. "I went into full panic mode."
The man screamed - alternating between English and Korean - that he had a bomb and wanted to go to Vancouver, BC, because he had never been there before, according to court documents. Both Parente and the man were in business class. Parente was groggy after a nap when flight attendants asked for his help.
The two men initially were thought by other passengers and the pilots, who came out from the cockpit, to be fighting with each other until the flight attendants clarified the matter.
"It was just bedlam," said Parente, who added that the man told him "I won't talk to anyone but you."
At that moment, Parente looked into his eyes and thought "Something wasn't right with this guy and I realized he had nothing to lose." Parente led him back to his seat, but he jumped up again and tried to get to the cockpit again before two of the pilots helped Parente wrestle the disturbed man to the ground.
He was restrained in his seat with zip ties before arriving at Seattle-Tacoma Airport, where Sea-Tac officials, police and members of the Department of Homeland Security were waiting.
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