Actress Selma Blair was arrested Sunday night at John F. Kennedy International Airport after she allegedly assaulted crew members aboard Delta Air Lines Flight 938 from Los Angeles, leaving two flight attendants injured.
Port Authority Police Department (PAPD) said they responded at approximately 11 p.m. on Sunday, Oct. 11, after receiving a call about a physically abusive passenger aboard the aircraft, which was parked at the gate after arrival from LAX. Officers identified the passenger as actress Selma Blair, 54. They took her into custody and transported her to a hospital for evaluation.
Two flight attendants reported injuries, and one was transported to a hospital for further evaluation.
Unnamed law enforcement sources who spoke to TMZ Monday described the confrontation as having started while the plane was still airborne.
Blair allegedly became involved in a physical confrontation with crew members in which she punched one flight attendant and bit another, with one attendant sustaining a laceration and the other a bite injury. Blair had to be placed in restraints to de-escalate the situation on board, and she was taken into custody after landing.
According to the source cited by TMZ, she allegedly tried to open the plane door while the plane was airborne.
This is not the first time such an incident involving Blair has occurred. Back on June 20, 2016, while returning to Los Angeles from Cancun, Mexico, after a Father’s Day trip with her then-4-year-old son Arthur and his father, former boyfriend Jason Bleick, Blair became highly distressed during the flight.
Blair began screaming accusations that included claims that someone was burning her private parts, and that the person would not let her eat or drink, furthermore, that the person was beating her, and was going to kill her. Two nurses who were on board that flight assisted her, and she was subdued and given oxygen before being removed from the plane on a stretcher after landing at LAX and taken to a nearby hospital.
No criminal charges were reported from that incident.
In Sunday’s accident, TMZ described obtaining dispatch audio and eyewitness-recorded audio related to the response. Dispatch had requested medical personnel at the gate for minor injuries, including a bloody nose and bite marks, and noted that the passenger had bashed her head against a bulkhead.
The eyewitness audio captured Blair screaming as she was removed from the plane with alarms audible in the background. The reported conduct continued after the aircraft landed. While being taken to the hospital by ambulance, Blair allegedly kicked a Port Authority police officer in the head. At the hospital, she allegedly separately assaulted a nurse who pressed charges.
State authorities charged Blair with two counts of second-degree assault, one related to the officer and one related to the nurse, according to reports citing charging documents. She was arraigned in Queens Criminal Court, where bail was set at $20,000, and was released after the arraignment.
Separately, the FBI issued a federal summons, described as a violation notice, alleging assault within the special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the United States in connection with the alleged conduct aboard the aircraft.
“I made a big mistake yesterday. After a lovely trip with my son and his Dad, I mixed alcohol with medication, and that caused me to black out and led me to say and do things that I deeply regret,” Blair said in a statement apologizing after the 2016 accident.
In her apology, Blair said her son had been asleep with headphones beside his father during the accident and called it a saving grace.
She expressed that she took what happened very seriously, for which she apologized to the passengers and crew she disturbed, and said thank you to those who helped her, saying she is a flawed human being filled with shame over the incident and is truly sorry.
Blair’s representative, in a statement to TMZ on Monday, said Blair experienced a medical emergency that led to the alleged conduct. The representative also noted Blair received immediate medical attention upon landing and that she is in stable condition.
Ms. Blair was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2018 and has spoken publicly about living with the condition for years. Although she has since been in remission, the actress often travels with her service dog, Scout, who was also aboard this Sunday flight and during the 2016 incident.
In October 2016, the Hollywood icon discussed the episode on The Talk, a CBS daytime talk show, describing it as a total psychotic blackout. According to her, she said someone gave her a pill she thought she had taken before but it was different, she noted that she rarely drinks and has stopped drinking, and that she found the experience horrible and frightening.
She further described the accident as out of character for her as a mother and said that she went home a couple of hours after hospital treatment.
