SAN DIEGO — A San Diego businessman is being called a hero after subduing an out-of-control passenger on a Korea Air flight from South Korea to Seattle.
Gene Parente was asleep in his seat during the Thursday, Sept. 24 flight when an attendant suddenly asked him for help.
“I run to the front of the crew quarters and there's this gentleman and he's got one hand on the cockpit door. He's yanking as hard as he can and he's beating on the door with his other hand,” Parente said.
“I grabbed him and I tried to spin him to get him out, and as I did he punched me and then the next thing I know we're in a full-on fist fight,” said Parente.
According to court records, the man causing the commotion, Gyeong Jei Lee, was suffering from mental issues.
He placed a plastic bag over head and started threatening flight attendants with a hair pin about one hour before the plane was set to land in Seattle, according to the federal court records.
“I looked in his eyes and I realized that there was some sort of mental illness, and he was having a psychotic episode and that's when I got really scared,” Parente recalled. “One of the flight attendants attempted to intervene. He hit her like a linebacker hitting a school kid, knocked her down. The flight attendant chasing him screamed. He turned around and she shot him point blank in the chin with a taser.”
With the help of two Korean Air pilots, Parente was able to get the man under control.
“We put giant zip ties on him that the airline had and we basically hog tied him and sat on him for 40 minutes until we landed,” Parente said.
Lee is facing federal charges of assault while on an aircraft and interference with a flight crew.
Korean Air issued a written statement to the Seattle Times saying flight crew members are trained to subdue unruly passengers and that includes the use of tasers.