A 49-year-old woman faces federal charges after she allegedly got drunk and assaulted her minor daughter on a Hawaiian Airlines flight from Los Angeles to Honolulu in November.
Samantha Ann Dennis is charged with simple
assault and interference with flight crew members and attendants, according to a nine-page federal criminal complaint filed April 3.
After Dennis’ flight landed in Honolulu, her daughter was taken by ambulance to a hospital where state child welfare services workers assessed her and “determined that she would be placed in foster care,” where she remains, according to federal court documents.
An interview of Dennis at the airport was terminated because she appeared to be under the influence of drugs and/or alcohol, according to court records.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Lauren M. Nakamura is prosecuting the case.
On Tuesday the U.S. Attorney’s Office withdrew a motion to detain Dennis without bail until trial. The U.S. Attorney’s Office declined comment on the reason for withdrawing the motion.
Dennis is being represented by the office of the federal public defender.
On Nov. 4, state sheriff’s deputies were called to the arrival gate for Hawaiian Airlines Flight 9
after receiving reports that “a female passenger was being physically and verbally abusive to her minor daughter and
had interfered with the duties of the flight crew members and attendants,” according to an affidavit authored by a task force officer with
the Federal Bureau of
Investigation.
A flight attendant told investigators that during the the first two hours of the flight, four separate
passengers came to her
to report that a young
girl “was being verbally abused by her mother,
Dennis.”
A fifth passenger told the flight attendant that they saw Dennis kick her daughter and tell her, “You keep smiling like that, God is going to kill you.”
The flight attendant told investigators that Dennis’ actions frightened her.
“We were 30,000 feet in the air with no one to help if she (Dennis) went crazy. I had anxieties because she was not completely there, and her actions were not that of a normal person,” the attendant told investigators, according to court
records.
Dennis allegedly threatened another passenger, the flight attendant told investigators. That passenger, an off-duty Long Beach, Calif., Police Department officer, helped restrain Dennis and “placed her in handcuffs, and moved Dennis to a different seat.”
Dennis’ behavior stopped flight attendants from offering water every 30 minutes for the remainder of the flight.
Another passenger told Dennis to lower her voice and asked her whether
everything was OK, to which Dennis told the passenger she “was trying to calm her daughter.”
“At this time, multiple passengers stood up
and reported witnessing Dennis push (the girl’s) head against the window and verbally abuse her,” according to the affidavit.
A flight attendant who had to sit next to Dennis and then later at the back to the plane with her daughter, told investigators that she felt “alarmed and scared due to the number of passengers standing
up in a darkened aircraft and yelling at Dennis”
to stop abusing her
daughter.
There was the “likelihood of a riot” on board, and the attendant told federal law enforcement she had never experienced anything like that before.
On March 13 a child and adolescent forensic interview was done with Dennis’ daughter at the FBI’s Honolulu field office.
The girl told FBI agents that Dennis was “drinking and started hitting her,
kicking her, and hitting her head.” Dennis would not let her daughter talk and “spoke for her.”
After the police officer handcuffed her mom and moved her to the back of the plane, the girl told FBI agents “she was so scared she was shaking but calmed down after a while.”
