Flight attendant ‘slashes co-worker in the neck’
A Delta Air Lines flight attendant allegedly slashed a co-worker as he ‘blacked out’ from drinking.
Joshua Smith, 36, and a few other co-workers were going back to their hotel in New Orleans, Louisiana, after a night out when he began bickering with one of them, police said.
”The victim escorted the suspect to his room at which time an argument ensued and the suspect cut the victim twice on the arm and once to the neck,’ stated the New Orleans Police Department.
Smith is accused of following the female victim as she went to another floor of the waterfront hotel to look for help.
A security guard stepped in and ‘the suspect cut him on the thumb’, police said.
Cops responded to Poydras Street around 3am on Monday.
The victim told police that Smith ‘began acting strangely’ on their way back to the hotel.
She was transported to a nearby hospital and is in stable condition, WDSU reported. She was not immediately identified.
Smith’s attorney, Thomas Calogero, said the group had been drinking and his client ‘had blacked out’.
‘He has no memory of the incident at all, nothing,’ Calogero told NBC News.
Smith has been charged with second-degree attempted murder, aggravated assault, aggravated battery and simple battery. He is being held in a jail in the Big Easy.
Calogero argues that Smith should not be charged because ‘I don’t believe there was an intent to murder’.
But the lawyer admitted that he does not think Smith will be able to stay employed as a flight attendant.
‘I mean I’m sure he’s going to lose his job at Delta,’ Calogero said. ‘I expect him to.’
Delta Air Lines told WSB-TV that the company has ‘zero tolerance for violence against or among our people and will continue to fully cooperate with law enforcement officials’.
The incident happened more than a year after an American Airlines flight attendant was discovered dead in her hotel room near Philadelphia International Airport with a cloth stuffed in her mouth.
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