Video shows woman who missed her flight attempting to stop plane at Australian airport



Missing a flight can prove to be a costly mistake. Some people with the means and the time might reschedule and wait. Others might consider getting to their destination by way of alternative modes of transportation. A woman in Canberra, Australia, elected to pursue an entirely unorthodox course of action Wednesday. For her efforts, she will likely be grounded for the foreseeable future.

After missing her flight to Adelaide, a woman bypassed security at Canberra Airport and stole onto the tarmac, hoping to flag down a QantasLink Embraer E190AR plane.

"People were a bit flat-footed; they didn't seem to know what to do," Dennis Bilic, a witness who captured the incident on film, told 9News. "That was the weird part."

Bilic, who used the hashtag "runwaymodel," on X, noted that he and other witnesses were wondering, "Is anyone gonna stop her?"

Footage shows a woman in what appear to be sandals walking around the undercarriage of a ready, loaded, and sealed aircraft, trying to get the pilot's attention while an emergency alarm blares.

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Simon Hales, another eyewitness to the futile hitchhiking efforts, said, "She's trying to yell at the pilot, she's trying to get his attention and jump up, it was bizarre."

Hales apparently noted on Meta, "Well that was a little different. Sitting at the airport in Canberra ready to come home. And then a lady who had clearly missed her flight decided she could still catch it. Pushed past the staff at the door and ran down onto the tarmac and ran up to the plane. Literally was standing underneath it next the front wheel."

Hales indicated the pilot killed the engines, having apparently spotted the woman below.

Flights at the airport were reportedly only delayed about 10 minutes.

Australian Federal Police arrested the woman around 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday. An AFP spokesman told Insider she has been charged with entering an airside area or security zone without permission, damaging property, and unlawful possession of cannabis.

The BBC reported the woman is set to appear in court on Friday and that bail has been denied.

While "bizarre," the woman's attempt was not unprecedented.

In 2015, Marc Rehmar rushed the tarmac at Denver International Airport, hoping to catch his departing flight. He ended up with two years of probation and 100 hours of community service.

In 2016, a Bolivian national who missed boarding at Spain's Adolfo Suárez Madrid-Barajas Airport for a Ryanair flight bound for the Canary Islands ran across the tarmac with luggage in hand in a futile effort to flag down his flight.

The Guardian indicated the plane the man attempted to stop wasn't his own. He was subsequently arrested.

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Bound and brutalized kidnapping victim seen climbing out of trunk of car wreck in Seattle



A 63-year-old man's car was stolen and wrecked in northeastern Seattle last week. Even more troubling was that he was beaten, bound, and placed in the trunk first.

Police received multiple reports of a collision in the Ravenna neighborhood early Thursday morning after a vehicle careened into a residence in the 7200 block of 27th Avenue NE.

Seattle Police Officer Judinna Gulpan indicated that witnesses observed a man climbing out of the trunk of the vehicle, which suspects had driven into the home of Brooks Mierow.

Mierow noticed the wreck begin smoking shortly after the crash. Upon seeing the fire responsible for the smoke spread to his home, Mierow evacuated the location, reported KING-TV.

"I got my kids to get their shoes and coats on and get out of the house, I got the dog, and then fired another fire extinguisher into it," said Mierow.

The homeowner's fire retardant proved helpful, containing the flames until the Seattle Fire Department arrived on the scene and extinguished the blaze.

As the Mierows moved to get clear of an inferno firefighters ensured never came to be, they heard the anguished sounds of someone near or inside the wreck.

"Then we heard a screaming of ahh, ahh. I think he was trying to scream for help," neighbor Cheng Yu told KING.

Yu indicated that the accident had been heralded by "the most sickening crunch."

Raegan McKibbon, a local resident who saw two suspects bail out of the vehicle after the crash, helped the victim across the street and out of harm's way.

McKibbon noted that she found the victim "sitting outside, kind of by the trunk of his car, and he was all tied up with rope and he was screaming 'help me, help me, I've just been kidnapped, call 911.'"

"He was beat up pretty bad," said McKibbon. "They had cut his face with a knife and had beat him up pretty badly."

The 63-year-old victim indicated he had been assaulted by several suspects before being tied up and jammed into the trunk of his own car.

The victim was treated for non-life-threatening injuries and taken to Harborview Medical Center.

Police indicated that an 18-year-old male who matched the description of a possible suspect was detained, questioned, and released. There have yet to be any arrests.

"You can't make this stuff up, it's so absurd," said Yu.

According to police, as of February 28, the Ravenna neighborhood of Seattle had so far this year already seen three rapes, five robberies, 13 aggravated assaults, 54 burglaries, and 42 motor vehicle thefts.

Seattle, more broadly, has seen 710 violent crimes in the first two months of 2023, including eight homicides and 54 rapes, along with 233 robberies and 1,134 motor vehicle thefts.

Neighborhood Scout ranks Democrat-run Seattle as among the unsafest cities in the U.S., scoring it a 1 out of 100 (100 being safest) on its crime index.

The city saw its highest violent crime rate in 15 years in 2022, reported the Seattle Times. Compounding the problem is policing manpower. The Seattle Police Department has lost around 525 officers since 2020, when the City Council decided to drastically slash the police budget.

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Florida woman in labor showed up to vote, refused go to hospital until she cast her ballot



A pregnant Florida woman in labor refused to go to the hospital to give birth Tuesday afternoon until after she cast her ballot in the U.S. presidential election.

The determined voter had her husband run into the Orange County Supervisor of Elections Office to fetch her a mail-in ballot while she waited in the car at the office's parking lot, the Orlando Sentinel reported.

Eileen Deliz, an early voting clerk for the Supervisor of Elections, told the Sentinel that the woman's husband spoke with a customer service representative who gave him the ballot and waited as she filled it out in her car. She said neither the woman nor her husband told election officials why she insisted on voting while she was in labor.

Danaë Rivera-Marasco, communications and community outreach coordinator for the Orange County Supervisor of Elections, said the unidentified woman was already in labor when she arrived to request her ballot.

Deliz speculated that the woman may have wanted to vote in-person but went into labor before she had the opportunity.

"Maybe she wanted to come in-person at one point and that's why she was waiting, who knows. But she wouldn't go to the hospital until she voted," Deliz said.

She added that elections staff were thrilled by her enthusiasm for voting.

"We are very, very busy, but when something like that happens it just makes our day," Deliz said. "It kind of validates what we do [and] the importance of voting. Every election cycle brings us a great little story."

According to the Sentinel's report, after turning in her ballot the woman's husband drove her to Orlando Health Winnie Palmer Hospital.

Florida is considered a pivotal swing state in the 2020 election. The state permits early voting, allowing voters to request a ballot by mail or vote early in-person at 10 days before Election Day. According to WFOR-TV, 41% of eligible voters in Florida have already cast their ballots, totaling more than 6.4 million votes.

More than 65.5 million votes have already been cast in the 2020 presidential election, already more than half of the total votes cast for the presidential election in 2016.

With six days remaining before the election, President Donald Trump has taken a slight lead ahead of Democratic nominee Joe Biden in the RealClearPolitics average of Florida polls. Trump will campaign in the Sunshine State on Thursday after completing rallies on Wednesday in Arizona.