by Donald Wood
Last updated: 1:40 PM ET, Mon December 11, 2017
A Southwest Airlines flight was forced to make an emergency landing Saturday after a female passenger told a crew member that she would "kill everybody" on the plane.
According to KOIN.com, Southwest Flight 2943 was traveling from Portland, Oregon, to Sacramento, California, when one of the attendants found a passenger had disabled a smoke detector and was smoking in the bathroom.
The female passenger, identified as 24-year-old Valerie Curbelo of Oregon, was confronted by crew members and created a disturbance by threatening to kill everyone onboard if the pilot diverted the plane. The incident was captured on video.
"I swear, if you land, I will kill everybody on this [expletive deleted] plane," Curbelo can be heard saying on the video. "I will kill everybody on this [expletive deleted] plane!"
Eventually, a male passenger and several crew members restrained Curbelo for the remainder of the flight, according to witnesses. She was turned over to police after the plane made a safe priority landing at Sacramento International Airport.
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A Southwest spokesperson released a statement on the incident.
"Our crew in command of Flight 2943 traveling from Portland on Saturday afternoon safely landed on-time in Sacramento following an in-flight disturbance," the spokesman said.
"Our reports from flight attendants indicate a customer violated federal laws by both smoking onboard an aircraft and by tampering with a smoke detector in an aircraft restroom. Our crew enforced the regulation and that was followed by the passenger outburst."
Curbelo was charged with making criminal threats and is currently booked at Sacramento County jail. In a conversation from jail with CBS Sacramento, she blamed anxiety for the need to light a cigarette onboard and the reason behind her sudden outburst.
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