A disabled teenager was left bleeding and bruised after being arrested by security staff at Memphis International airport, according to a lawsuit by her family.
Hannah Cohen, 19, was flying home to Chattanooga after receiving her final treatment for a brain tumour interstate — a trip she’s made multiple times over the past 17 years.
She set off the metal detector at the security checkpoint and became disoriented when Transport Security Administration insisted in taking her to a “sterile area” to be searched, her mother, Shirley Cohen, told local TV news station WREG-TV.
Hannah is blind in one eye, deaf in one ear and partially paralysed as a result of the tumour and was startled when the guards grabbed each of her arms, she said.
Hannah’s mother describes this incident for WREG-TV (post continues after video):
“They wanted to do further scanning. She was reluctant — she didn’t understand what they were about to do,” her mum Shirley said.
“She’s trying to get away from them but in the next instant, one of them had her down on the ground and hit her head on the floor. There was blood everywhere.”
Shirley repeatedly tried to explain her daughter’s condition to the agents but they ignored her, pushing her to one side.
A lawsuit filed by the family is calling for $100,000 USD compensation for alleged assault “causing her physical and emotional injury as well as emotional injury” to her mother.
Hannah was arrested, taken to hospital and then spent 24 hours in Shelby County jail, according to the Guardian.
She was separated from her mother the entire time and when she was finally released broken down in her mother’s arms crying “I’m sorry, Mama.”
“She’s 19 but she’ll always be my baby. We’ve been through so much,” Shirley said.
Feature image: WREG-TV
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Top Comments
This is really disturbing. All it takes is one look at the young girls face to realise she is blind in one eye. How any security guard can consider this treatment appropriate is beyond me.
Welcome to the new world - a much more horrible place than you thought it would be.
This is fucking lousy stuff.
Those officials are there to SERVE, not to behave like this.
"Shirley repeatedly tried to explain her daughter’s condition to the agents but they ignored her, pushing her to one side."
That bit suggests that these pieces of shit did not care what they were doing.
And I'm going out on a limb here, but I think they may have enjoyed what they did. The lives of disabled people don't seem to count for much these days.
This was not about transport safety.
It was abuse.
Sounds exactly like transit security guards here. One young man explaining his wallet had been stolen, lacking money and I'd pinned to the ground, crying about how he wanted to kill himself was treated more brutually. Some people are control hungry mongrels with no compassion.
Agreed.
If the TSA was about security, why aren't they bothered enough to screen their operatives more thoroughly?
:(
And if she was carrying a bomb and they let her run and detonate?
"Well her mum said it was OK"
We have to understand most people are not terrorists. Some very vulnerable people are being hurt. If they truly believed in security we would see very different behaviour. When you think all people are running around with bombs you have allowed the terrorists to win. Humanity comes first.