Thread by @fsareshwala

This morning, my wife left Orlando, Florida aboard @SouthwestAir flight 1630 (MCO to PHX).

She sat behind this man. She had been attending the Grace Hopper Conference all week and was resting her head on her tray table, trying to sleep a bit.

Let me tell you what happened.

This man violently pushed his seat back in an attempt to hurt @saarahfaraaz while her head was there. After coming to, she initially thought it was an accident; someone falling down in their own seat after returning from the bathroom or something.

Thinking she might have bumped the man's chair while sleeping, @saarahfaraaz went to the bathroom to check her injuries. Sitting next to her were a mother and daughter who were awake when this all occurred. They asked for ice from the crew for Saarah and confronted the man.

The man responded by making the blah blah motion with his hands and facetiously said "fuck off, fuck off!" He told the daughter to "stay in [her] fucking lane, bitch." He then said about my wife that "the fucking bitch got what was coming for her."

While Saarah was in the bathroom, flight attendants began serving drinks. The man and his wife discussed using their seat in this way again so that Saarah's drink would spill on her.

When @saarahfaraaz returned from the bathroom, her seatmates explained their interaction with the man and told Saarah to inform the flight crew. When Saarah did, all the crew initially offered was to switch seats with not even a reprimand for the aggressor (wtf @SouthwestAir?).

Only when the mother brought up (to another flight attendant) that this was actually physical assault, they offered to call the police. Saarah and her seatmates began to communicate via notes on a napkin.

Here's one of the pages that Gabi [last name redacted], one of Saarah's seatmates, wrote down:

@saarahfaraaz chose not to change seats because she felt safer with her current seatmates who witnessed the ordeal. Throughout the rest of the flight, this man kept spewing racial slurs and misogynistic venom at Saarah. He kept pushing his seat back in an attempt to hurt Saarah.

As passengers started deplaning, the man, knowing the police had been called, suddenly became very chatty with others around him, complimenting potential witnesses. Police escorted Saarah to a safe area to get her story and barred the aggressor and his wife from leaving.

The Phoenix police took everyone's stories (the man, his wife, Saarah's, the mother and daughter sitting next to Saarah, etc). They said that because the incident occurred above the gulf of Mexico, it was out of their jurisdiction and the @FBI would have to get involved instead.

The Phoenix police took all the details and sent the information to the FBI. We don't have an FBI case number but the Phoenix police said that if the FBI thinks there is enough evidence to press charges they will reach back out.

@saarahfaraaz never even exchanged any words with this man before or after the incident. Even if she did bump his seat by accident, it didn't warrant using racial slurs, misogynistic comments, or a violent, repeated, physical assault.

Saarah is back home safe now but even after many, many hours, her head still hurts with a sharp pain where she was hit. We're thinking of going to the doctor if it doesn't get better.

We still don't know why he became so violent. However, I do know that my wife has never felt so violated, voiceless, and powerless.

I'm so glad Gabi and her mother were there to help Saarah through this by getting ice for her injuries and offering witness testimony.

It's all so ironic. Saarah had just finished up a week at Grace Hopper Conference #GHC22 #ghc2022, a tech event that also discusses women's empowerment and eliminating violence against women.

As she boards her flight, she's immediately reminded that she's back in reality.

Without any other interaction, this man only had how Saarah looked to go off of and I have no idea what about her looks made him so angry. He used racial slurs and misogynistic comments so I guess it was that she was Indian and a woman (read: not white and not a man).

It makes me wonder what would happen if the roles were reversed: what if a brown man attacked a white woman this way. Would it just be allowed to blow over?