by Donald Wood
Last updated: 9:06 AM ET, Mon December 3, 2018
Update: December 4, 2018 at 2:25 p.m. ET
American Airlines is denying the claims of a family that said their wheelchair-bound mother had been abandoned at O'Hare Airport overnight after her flight was canceled.
According to WGNTV.com, officials from American launched an investigation that found the claims were false based on surveillance camera footage, call records from the wheelchair attendant's phone and reservations call records.
While the 67-year-old woman's family claims she was left at the gate overnight, investigators from the airline said she was transported to a waiting area by an attendant and picked up by a family member 45 minutes later.
The video footage also reportedly shows the woman stand up from her wheelchair and go outside with the assistance of a walker to smoke a cigarette twice during her wait.
A family is searching for answers after a 67-year-old woman was reportedly left in her wheelchair overnight at a Chicago airport last week due to her flight being canceled.
According to CBS Chicago, Olimpia Warsaw was attending a relative's funeral in Illinois and scheduled to fly home to Detroit Friday. Her son Claude Coltea walked his mother to the gate at Chicago O'Hare International Airport where they were met by a porter.
Coltea was assured by the porter that Warsaw would be taken care of and left his mother at the airport. A short time later, the woman's American Airlines flight to Detroit was canceled and she was offered a hotel room for the night.
Instead of taking Warsaw to her room, the porter left the airport when his shift ended and the woman's inability to communicate left her unable to summon her own transportation. As a result, she was left near the gate for hours.
Warsaw's family began contacting officials from O'Hare when they discovered her Detroit flight had been canceled, but it took hours before security officials were able to find the woman in her wheelchair, wearing the same clothes as she did the previous day.
American Airlines told Fox News the airline has launched an investigation into the incident:
"We are very concerned about this and have launched an investigation with our Chicago team and the vendor we utilize that provides wheelchair services at Chicago O'Hare," a spokesperson for the airline said. "We have spoken with the family multiple times and met with them both in Chicago and Detroit yesterday. Our team has already refunded back the fare for this trip."
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