Crying 4-year-old
forced to undergo pat-down at U.S. airport after hugging grandmother
Roxana Hegeman
The Associated Press
The grandmother of a 4-year-old
girl who became hysterical during a security screening at a Kansas airport said
Wednesday that the child was forced to undergo a pat-down after hugging her,
with security agents yelling and calling the crying girl an unco-operative
suspect.
The child’s
grandmother, Lori Croft, told The Associated Press that Brademeyer and her
daughter, Isabella, initially passed through security at the Wichita airport
without incident. The girl then ran over to briefly hug Croft, who was awaiting
a pat-down after tripping the alarm, and that’s when TSA agents insisted the
girl undergo a physical pat-down.
Isabella had just
learned about “stranger danger” at school, her grandmother said, adding that
the girl was afraid and unsure about what was going on.
“She started to cry,
saying ‘No I don’t want to,’ and when we tried talking to her she ran,” Croft
said. “They yelled, ‘We are going to shut down the airport if you don’t grab
her.’”
But she said the
family’s main concern was the lack of understanding from TSA agents that they
were dealing with a 4-year-old child, not a terror suspect.
“There was no common
sense and there was no compassion,” Croft said. “That was our biggest fault
with the whole thing — not that they are following security procedures, because
I understand that they have to do that.”
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