Wendi Williams, the woman who went viral for tweeting a video of a man repeatedly hitting the back of her reclined seat, has spoken out.
Williams had flown American Airlines on January 31 from New Orleans to Charlotte, North Carolina – which is roughly a two-hour flight – when it all went down. In short: Williams reclined her seat, and the man behind her asked if she could return it to its original position so he could eat some food. She did. After the meal, Williams reclined her seat again and the bloke started punching it. A tale as old as time.
Appearing on Today this morning, Williams recounted her experience to hosts Karl Stefanovic and Allison Langdon. She said the worst of the punching wasn’t even caught on film.
“The man behind me asked me to put my chair up while he ate… and I did,” she explained.
“Then when he was done eating, I put my chair back down and reclined. At that point, he started punching … not what you see in the video but really punching hard on my chair.”
https://twitter.com/steelersfanOG/status/1226346795741143040
Williams claimed the flight attendants “weren’t responding” so she decided to take action by filming the bloke, in the hopes that he would stop.
“When I finally did grab the flight attendant’s attention, I stopped videoing and told her, and she was kind of huffy with me and then went to him and basically said, ‘I’m so sorry, it is tight back here, are you OK?’”
Williams was shocked by the flight attendant’s response. She also claimed the flight attendant gave the man complimentary rum.
“I thought, ‘really?’ This guy has been hitting me for the last five or 10 minutes,” she said. “At that point I was like, ‘What’s going on here, this is insane.”
Williams said the public’s argument of whether or not she should have reclined her seat is “absolutely ridiculous”.
“When he asked me if I would put my seat up while he ate, I obliged. After he started throwing blows and punching me, I mean, I don’t understand where people are missing the point in the respect.
“If he would have said to me … ‘Do you mind not reclining?’ I would have 100 per cent said, ‘absolutely’ and I would have put my chair back up. But the way he handled it, I can’t believe people are trying to put it on me.”
On Twitter, Williams said she lost time at work, had to visit a doctor, had x-rays, and experienced horrible headaches for a week as a result of the altercation.
https://twitter.com/steelersfanOG/status/1226230860061560832
She is looking to press assault charges against the man and is consulting an aviation lawyer.
