Theater of the absurdWoman who sneaks applesauce through airport gets off
A 58-year old woman trying to bring applesauce and snacks on board for her 93-year old mother who was flying from California to Tennessee, is arrested, strip-searched, and jailed; the woman said she was given permission to bring the snacks with her, but TSA personnel at the gate refused to let her through; a judge says the case will be dismissed if she stays out of trouble for six months
A 58-year-old woman accused of hitting a Bob Hope Airport security agent while trying to take applesauce and other snacks for her elderly mother through security got a reprieve the other day from a judge who said the case would be dismissed if she stayed out of trouble for six months.
Nadine Kay Hays, of Camarillo, was captured on airport video that shows her getting into a tussle with a Transportation Security Administration (TSA) agent while trying to take a cooler containing the snacks through airport security last April. Hays and her 93-year-old mother were heading to Nashville for a family wedding.
The Beverly Hills Courier reports that Hays was instead arrested on suspicion of misdemeanor battery for her scuffle with the security guard. “Officers come up and they cuff me, and they put me in the police car, and by now I’m hysterical because I’ve never had an encounter with the law,” Hays told KTLA5.
Hays insisted that she had checked with the TSA previously to see if she could take the snacks aboard the plane, and was assured that she could because of her mother’s medical condition. The agents at the airport, though, said the food could not go on the plane, prompting an argument and then a tug-of-war with the blue cooler, she said. “And at that point I said, ‘The ice chest belongs to me, give it to me,’ and a tug-of-war, that was kind of the scene in the airport,” she said.
Hays said she eventually got the cooler back, threw the food away and passed through security. She was arrested a short time later.
In court today, Glendale Superior Court Judge Frederick R. Rotenberg told Hays that he would dismiss the case in six months if she stayed out of trouble. He set another court date for 18 October.
“This should have happened a year ago,” Hays’s attorney, Mary Frances Prevost, said. “She should never have been arrested. She was arrested at the airport with her elderly mother. She was strip-searched at a jail. This should never have happened.”
Hays told the station her family and friends kept encouraging her to accept a plea bargain, but she refused. “The toughest part was they all wanted me to take the plea bargain, but I said no I can’t do it,” she said. “And if nothing else, it’s an example that I’ve set for my family.”
Hays told the station her mother died three weeks ago at age 94.
