A 21-year-old Indian-origin man from Newark was arrested after he engaged in a fight on board a Frontier Airlines flight. Ishaan Sharma is accused of attacking a fellow passenger “without provocation,” following which he was arrested as the plane touched down in Miami.
According to reports, Sharma assaulted Keanu Evans for no apparent reason soon after their flight took off from Philadelphia. After the mid-air brawl, Sharma sustained a black eye along with a laceration on his eyebrow.
‘He was doing a dark laugh’
Evans told media outlets that before Sharma grabbed him by the throat, he was seated in front of him and muttering strange things, even issuing death threats.
“He was doing some, like, dark laugh like, ‘ha ha ha ha ha.’ And he was saying things like, ‘you punt, mortal man, if you challenge me, it will result in your death,” Evans told WSVN in Miami.
Bothered by his unusual actions, Evan pressed the cabin crew assistance button, which sent Sharma into a fury.
In a video circulating online, Sharma can be seen tackling Evans, grabbing him by the throat before Evans begins hitting him back. Fellow passengers can be heard gasping and shouting in the video. “Let him go! Stop, let him go,” some of them urged Evans.
While a mugshot showed Sharma’s injured face, Evans suffered minor scratches.“It makes me feel bad because I don’t want people to get the wrong idea about who I am as a person,” he told WSVN.
‘He was meditating’
After Sharma was arrested and charged with battery, his attorney told the Daily Mail that the Indian-origin man was just meditating on the flight and his “silent practice” was seen as a threat by Evans.
“My client is from a religion where he was meditating. Unfortunately, the passenger behind him did not like that,” they said.
