photo courtesy of USA Today
Free agent wide receiver Odell Beckham Jr. was forcefully removed from an LA-bound flight on Sunday morning, November 27, for allegedly being “in and out of consciousness.”
According to ESPN, the flight crew was extremely concerned for Beckham, worried that the former NFL player was seriously ill after they tried “to wake him to fasten his seat belt,”
A police statement about the incident read, “Fearing that Mr. Beckham was seriously ill and that his condition would worsen through the expected 5-hour flight, the attendants called for police and fire rescue,” police said in a statement.
“Upon the officer’s arrival, the flight crew asked Mr. Beckham several times to exit the aircraft, which he refused. The aircraft was deplaned, at which time Mr. Beckham was asked by the officers to exit the plane and did so without incident. Mr. Beckham was escorted to the non-secure area of the terminal by the officers, where he made other arrangements.”
On-board crews said that the player refused to leave the plane, which resulted in all the passengers being removed and the flight being delayed while the incident was sorted out.
Following the incident, Beckham took to Twitter to address what happened. He wrote, “Never in my life have I experienced what just happened to me. I’ve seen it all.”
He didn’t give any more details about exactly what happened from his point of view, but he continued with another post, “I could never make this up. Comedy hr,”
American Airlines, the company that Beckham was flying with before he was ejected, released a statement of their own clearing up the details of that Sunday morning,
“American Airlines flight 1228, with service from Miami (MIA) to Los Angeles (LAX), returned to the gate before takeoff due to a customer failing to follow crew member instructions and refusing to fasten their seatbelt. The customer was removed and the flight re-departed at 10:45 a.m. local time.”