Sleeping woman on plane wakes up with man’s hand down her pants
A man has been arrested by federal authorities after allegedly sexually assaulting a woman when she fell asleep next to him on an overnight flight.
The 34-year-old man, Prabhu Ramamoorthy, who is in the country on a temporary visa, has been charged with aggravated sexual abuse and is being held without bail after appearing in federal court in Michigan on Thursday.
The woman, 22, was sitting in the window seat next to Ramamoorthy and his wife was sitting on his other side. They were on a Spirit Airlines flight from Las Vegas to Detroit on January 3.
According to federal prosecutor Amanda Jawad, the victim woke up with her shirt unbuttoned as well as her pants and the man had his hand down her pants. He stopped his assault when the woman woke up. At that time she went to the back of the plane to report the assault to a flight attendant.
Two flight attendants reported to federal investigators that the victim was crying, her shirt untied and her pants unbuttoned when she told them what had happened to her at about 5:30 am, which was 40 minutes before the plane landed.
The attendants kept the woman at the back of the plane, offering her a different seat. During the time they were speaking to the woman, the attacker’s wife came back to see what was happening.
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Once the plane landed Ramamoorthy was arrested. In a written statement that he gave to agents, he said he took a sleeping pill and fell into a deep sleep. He said he didn’t touch the woman and he found out from his wife that the victim was sleeping on his knees.
The wife backs up her husband’s claims saying that they had asked flight attendants to give them different seats. However, the “flight attendants did not report that anyone asked them to change seats other than the victim,” Jawad said.
According to Jawad, Ramamoorthy gave “conflicting reports,” about what happened with the victim.
Magistrate Judge R. Steven Whalen, stated it was a “very unusual case,” before ordering Ramamoorthy to be held without bail after Jawad successfully argued that the man was a flight risk and a potential danger to others around him.
The prosecutor also said that the wife, who is also in the US on a temporary visa, would not be able to be a proper custodian for him.
“It seems that she’s either colluding with the defendant to cover up his actions or she’s completely oblivious to what he did,” Jawad argued. “What makes this offense particularly egregious and the defendant even more of a danger to the community is the fact that it took place on an airplane. He was brazen enough to do this basically in public, next to his wife where anyone could have seen him.”
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