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Groping Passenger Sentenced to Six Months for Grabbing Flight Attendant

Enio Socorro Zayas was found guilty after grabbing a flight attendant’s thigh and buttocks as she placed a snack pack in his lap.

A Florida man has been sentenced to six months in prison for grabbing the upper thigh and buttocks of an American Airlines flight attendant in 2021. Enio Socorro Zayas was sentenced by U.S. District Court in the Southern District of Florida for the Aug. 6 incident. According to court documents, Zayas appeared to be asleep on a flight from Cancun to Miami when a flight attendant placed a snack pack on his lap instead of waking him. She then testified that she “felt a hand grip the bottom of her thigh and move upwards towards the lower portion of her buttocks before rubbing firmly from side to side.” Zayas pleaded guilty to simple assault in October. More than 6,000 reports of passengers behaving badly were reported in 2021, according to the Federal Aviation Administration, making it one of the worst years on record for passenger behavior.