Former Cincinnati Bengals CB Adam “Pacman” Jones was arrested yesterday following an incident at the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport, according to the Associated Press. Police responded to a report of an unruly passenger and charged the former NFL star with misdemeanor accounts of alcohol intoxication, disorderly conduct, and terroristic threatening, as the captain of the Boone County Jail, where he was booked, told the outlet.
Released after just a couple hours, he shared his side of the story. The issue started, he said, because the USB port for the seat that he purchased was not working. He said that the flight attendant would not accommodate him and suggested that he turn around the plane if he was unhappy. He noted that he was on his way to Monday Night Football and needed the charger to work to make sure that his iPad would be charged when he landed.
“I had a conversation with a stewardess, a man, about the plug wasn’t working”, he said. “I said, ‘Alright, can you move me somewhere else?’. It went from a whole thing, from moving me somewhere else, to, ‘Oh, if we move you, we’ve got to stop the whole plane’”.
Part 2. pic.twitter.com/YVto7xPiBY
— Adam Clements (@AClementsWKRC) September 11, 2023
He vehemently denied charges that he was intoxicated, noting that it was very early in the morning, the reporters questioning him refusing to answer his own question as to whether or not he appeared intoxicated (for the record, he does not appear to me to be intoxicated).
It’s worth noting that first-hand accounts from others on the plane lend some credence to Jones’ version of the story, in that a minor altercation quickly, and possibly unnecessarily, blew up to something much larger than it needed to be.
“It was a really brief interaction between him and the flight attendant”, another passenger told WLWT, “and then the flight attendant just wasn’t having it and kicked him off, maybe a little preemptively, but I think just his behavior throughout the beginning of the morning kind of led to that situation”.
Another passenger interviewed for the outlet noted that after all passengers were forced to deplane and the police were preparing to take him into custody, other passengers were pleading with the police, telling them that Jones did nothing wrong.
The police report indicates that he told the flight attendant, “I’m going to get you, and that’s not a threat, that’s a promise”. There does not appear to be video evidence available capturing that statement, even though much of the interaction appears to have been filmed by passengers onboard the flight.
Jones had a very checkered history through much of his career and was arrested multiple times. One time while with the Bengals he was arrested while very clearly intoxicated. He pleaded no contest to a 2021 misdemeanor assault charge most recently. In 2018, he was the one who was assaulted by an airport employee, who was later arrested.
