Florida man beats passenger bloody on United flight to Dulles

A deranged Florida man brutally beat a deaf and nonverbal passenger as he slept on a cross-country United Airlines flight this week until the cabin was splattered with blood.

The brutal collision occurred Monday about two hours after United Airlines Flight 2247 departed San Francisco for Washington Dulles.

According to a criminal complaint, it started when Everett Chad Nelson, 44, got up to go to the bathroom.

When Nelson returned to his seat, he stopped at seat 12F and “without notice, began physically attacking a sleeping male passenger, repeatedly punching him in the face and head until blood came out of him,” the complaint states .

“The next thing I know, I hear these bloodcurdling screams,” Sandhya Gupta, who was sitting one row behind the victim, told ABC 7 News.

“He just went very violently and very aggressively at the guy sitting at the window in front of me and it was vicious. It wasn't like a bar where I would throw a few punches. I mean, that was vicious,” he said.

According to officers, Nelson rained down blows on the defenseless man for a full minute. Finally, a good Samaritan jumped in and pulled him away from the victim.

Nelson split open the man's nose, causing blood to splatter on his seat, the cabin wall, the window and the sleeves of Nelson's green windbreaker, the complaint says. The victim also had two black eyes.

After the two were separated, a doctor who happened to be on board treated the man for his injuries – and passengers and crew discovered that the man could neither hear nor speak.

“When he tried to communicate with us in sign language, we discovered he was deaf and speechless,” he said.

He was able to communicate with United crew members via telephone messages.

“He also kept texting, 'I'm so scared.' Like it was just terrible,” he said.

Nelson escaped uninjured and “there were no signs of it.” [the alleged victim] “I beat him on defense,” the complaint states.

The flight attendants placed Nelson in a seat up front and assigned the same good Samaritan assigned to guard him until the plane landed.

The complaint does not describe a motive or say whether the two men had a previous relationship before the attack, which seemingly came out of nowhere.

Gupta told ABC 7 that during the text exchange with the victim, a flight attendant wrote that the suspect had claimed the victim had previously attacked him on the street – but the victim responded that he had never seen the man in his life.

There were 82 passengers and six crew members on board the flight, United Airlines said.

The TSA contacted the FBI mid-flight and stated that there had been a “Level 2 disturbance” on board, which the Federal Aviation Administration said constituted “physically abusive behavior.” This puts the incident one level above “Level 1,” which is “disruptive behavior,” but ahead of “Level 3,” which is an “attempted or actual break-in to the flight deck.”

“Thanks to the quick actions of our crew and customers, a passenger was restrained after he became physically aggressive toward another customer on a flight from San Francisco to Washington Dulles on Monday,” a United spokesman said in a statement.

“The flight landed safely and was met by paramedics and local law enforcement.”

Nelson was charged with assault by beating, striking and wounding in the United States Special Territory for Airplanes.

If convicted, he could face up to a year in prison.

The FAA has reported 1,748 cases of unruly passengers so far in 2024, slowly approaching last year's total of 20.76, according to the agency's website.

That's still well below the peak of 5,973 incidents involving unruly passengers in 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic.