OAN's Brooke Mallory
3:37 PM – Friday, January 19, 2024
Prosecutors say an American Airlines flight attendant secretly tried to record a 14-year-old girl in the plane's bathroom and also recorded other girls using the plane's restroom.
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Estes Carter Thompson III, 37, was arrested Thursday and is now charged with “one count of attempted sexual exploitation of a child and one count of possession of child pornography depicting a prepubescent minor.”
The U.S. Attorney's Office for Massachusetts issued a news release announcing Thompson's arrest Thursday in Lynchburg, Virginia.
“Mr. Thompson's actions were disgraceful, and we believe it is mathematically true, given that they occurred on at least five flights,” Jodi Cohen, special agent in charge of the FBI's Boston field office, said in a statement. ” he said.
Thompson is accused of attempting to record a 14-year-old boy while he was part of the flight crew on a flight from Charlotte, North Carolina, to Boston, Massachusetts, last year, the statement said.
Thompson was “immediately suspended from service” after the incident, and an American Airlines spokesperson said in a statement that he lost his job as soon as the airline was notified.
“We take these allegations very seriously,” American Airlines said in a statement. “They do not reflect our airline or our core mission of caring for people. Nothing is more important than the safety and security of our customers and teams, so we We have fully cooperated with the investigation.”
Prosecutors said the girl was waiting for an empty main cabin bathroom when a flight attendant approached her and directed her to an empty first-class bathroom instead. The press release went on to say that after Thompson went into the bathroom for a short time, the boy went into the bathroom and claimed he needed to “wash his hands” and that “the toilet seat broke.”
After the flight attendant left, the 14-year-old girl reportedly went into the bathroom, but when she opened the toilet seat cover, she saw the words “Dunfunctioning Eating Facility'' and “Removed from Service'' written on the underside. He said he saw a red label on it. Indictment.
“Thompson allegedly hid an iPhone under a red sticker to record the video,” the release states. She continued: “The girl took a photo of her phone that she had hidden and she returned to her seat to show it to her parents.”
Prosecutors added that the parents contacted other crew members on the plane, who alerted the captain, who alerted authorities on the ground.
Before the plane descended, the girl's father confronted Mr Thompson, who is said to have cowardly locked himself in the bathroom with his mobile phone for five minutes. Prosecutors said detectives suspect he may have tried to reset the phone to factory settings.
After the plane landed at Boston's Logan International Airport, authorities found 11 stickers in Thompson's bag that matched the stickers found in the plane's bathroom, the statement said.
Additionally, prosecutors say four videos of children “ages 7 to 14” using the plane's bathroom were posted to Thompson's iCloud account during the raids, which took place between January and August 2023. He said it was discovered that it had been backed up.
The North Carolina native will be held in custody pending an initial court appearance in the Western District of Virginia, and is scheduled to appear in federal court in Boston.
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