American Airlines is being sued for damages after a woman claims a baggage handler falsely accused her late husband of making a bomb threat.
Debbie Cardarelli was about to board a plane home to Rochester, New York, from Philadelphia with her husband, Richard, on March 24, 2017, when they were informed there was no more room for carry-on luggage in the overhead bins. According to Debbie, her husband complied and handed an American Airlines agent his luggage, forgetting that he had left his eye drops in the bag, the Washington Post reports.
According to Philly.com, who first wrote about the incident, Richard immediately realized he didn’t have the drops, which were imperative to his health due to a prior cornea transplant and asked the airline agent — identified in government documents as Tawanda Ward — if he could retrieve them from his luggage, which was still sitting beside them on the boarding bridge.
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Debbie recalled Ward saying “I’m sorry, sir, but now that you’ve handed me the bag, you can’t have the bag back,” Philly.com reports.
After trying to explain that the drops were critical for his health and asking a ticketing agent for help, Richard was able to get his eyedrops, but around twenty minutes after they took their seats on the plane, Debbie says a group of police officers came on board and put Richard in handcuffs. Everyone else was forced to deplane while K-9 teams searched the plane and luggage.
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The flight eventually took off, but the Cardarelli’s weren’t on it.
Instead, Richard spent a night in jail and was charged with disorderly conduct, making a terroristic threat and threatening to use a weapon of mass destruction, according to the Washington Post. Richard was released on $25,000 bail the following day — his 58th birthday.
According to Philly.com, during his trial in October 2017, Ward testified that Richard told her, “If I don’t get my bag back, it’s going to blow up!” But she also failed to tell anyone else about the alleged threat for 15 minutes after. The judge found Ward to be non-credible and Richard was acquitted of all charges.
However, just months after the trial ended, in January 2018, Richard passed away from pancreatic cancer.
The Washington Post reports that the criminal trial cost the couple over $20,000, according to Debbie, who also says the pair entered therapy following the incident and that her husband became so depressed he attempted suicide.
“It breaks my heart that his last birthday on the face of this earth was spent in jail,” Debbie told Philly.com.
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On March 21, 2018, Debbie filed a lawsuit with the Philadelphia County Court of Common Pleas Judge naming American Airlines, many of their airline affiliate brands and Ward, seeking over $1 million in damages. It alleges Ward falsified the bomb threat because she was angry following the argument over Richard’s carry-on and accuses American Airlines of poor behavior. It also cites an incident in which the Cardarellis attempted to fly American to Philadelphia to attend Richard’s trial, but where denied boarding despite confirming they would have no issue ahead of time.
“She lied through her teeth,” Debbie says of Ward. “It’s so ridiculous what I’m going through just because someone lied.”
American Airlines declined to comment on the matter to PEOPLE because of ongoing litigation.
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