|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
Local pastor helps subdue berserk soldier
By LESTER R. DAILEY
Article published on Wednesday, July 12, 2006 |
 |
![[Image]](/content_images/071206_fpg-01.jpg) |
| Herb Freitag |
|
CLEARWATER BEACH – The Rev. Herb Freitag was supposed to be flying coach on another airplane as he returned from his Maine vacation on the night of July 6.
But a missed connection at New York’s LaGuardia Airport caused Freitag to end up in the first-class section of Delta Flight 1850, the epicenter of a bizarre incident that pitted a berserk soldier, determined to break into the cockpit, against alarmed passengers, fighting to protect their plane.
Among the 125 passengers, seated in the rear section, was 24-year-old Neftali Alexander Lai-Mendez, a military policeman who was slated to be discharged from the U.S. Army in five days. Family members say that Lai-Mendez has been having mental problems ever since he returned from Iraq, where he had worked as a field artillery loader, six months earlier. He had requested treatment for depression and paranoia, relatives say, but the Army just brushed him off, claiming he was faking to get out of the Army early.
Lai-Mendez called his 19-year-old brother, Robert Cordero-Mendez, from New York, where he had gone on leave, and said people were trying to kill him. The brother wanted Lai-Mendez to get professional help in New York, but their mother wanted him to wait until he returned to their home in Tampa. Cordero-Mendez flew to New York to escort Lai-Mendez back to Tampa.
When Flight 1850 was about 20 minutes from touchdown at Tampa International Airport, Lai-Mendez, who was wearing civilian clothes, began acting strangely. He wandered around the cabin, showing his Asian tattoos to other passengers, and ignored flight attendants’ requests to sit down.
Freitag remembers what happened next.
“We had begun our descent and were about 15 minutes from landing when a man who had been all the way in the rear of the plane suddenly rushed to the front, crashed into the cockpit door and tried to get it open,” Freitag, pastor of the Chapel By The Sea in Clearwater Beach, recalled in a telephone interview.
Brandon businessman Gordon Montoya was sitting in front of Freitag. When he saw Lai-Mendez hit the cockpit door, Montoya, a 52-year-old former high school wrestler who runs and lifts weights to stay fit, immediately jumped him. The two men wrestled in the space between the cockpit door and the first row of seats for a few seconds before Freitag jumped in and tried to separate them. Almost immediately, he was joined by two other passengers.
Together, they managed to subdue Lai-Mendez until the plane landed. Montoya sat on him, holding his leg so he couldn’t stand up, while another man kept his foot on the soldier’s shoulder. When the plane landed, police came aboard and handcuffed Lai-Mendez as a flight attendant got on the public address system and thanked the passengers for their patience and for remaining calm during the incident.
Lai-Mendez, who enlisted in the Army in March 2004, wasn’t armed; nobody was hurt in the incident and the cockpit door, built to post–9/11 specifications, wasn’t breached. He was taken to St. Joseph’s Hospital for 72 hours of mental health evaluation under the state’s Baker Act.
“Everyone hopes this fellow gets the help he obviously needs and probably should have gotten before,” Freitag said.
|
Article published on Wednesday, July 12, 2006
Copyright © Tampa Bay Newspapers: All rights reserved. |
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Tampa Bay Newspapers
9911 Seminole Blvd.
Seminole, FL 33772
(727) 397-5563
Open Monday-Friday 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.
|
|
