Odell Beckham Jr called a passenger “fat” and “ugly,” new police bodycam footage from his 27 November removal from a plane at Miami International Airport shows.
The free-agent wide receiver is seen in the footage verbally abusing another passenger. The footage also includes flight attendants remembering how he appeared to be unresponsive and wasn’t wearing pants when they attempted to get him to put on his seatbelt.
The footage was released this week by the Miami-Dade Police Department. The footage begins by showing police entering the American Airlines flight and walking up to where the football player was sitting in first class as other passengers look on.
One officer asked Mr Beckham, “sir, are you able to get up? Can you get up, please? Are you okay?”
Mr Beckham wakes up, startled and seemingly confused, saying that he was “probably in a deep sleep” as the police tell him why they’re there.
He answers some questions from the officers, and the NFL player receives a thumbs up from law enforcement before the flight attendants argue that he wasn’t wearing pants before the arrival of the police. The attendants also claim that Mr Beckham was drunk.
“Do you know how many times we’ve shaken him to put the seatbelt on?” an attendant tells police in the footage. “Multiple times, multiple people.”
“This is a five-hour flight, he shouldn’t be doing this,” another attendant adds, saying that Mr Beckham said he had been out to nightclubs the previous evening.
“He’s tired,” police said, but the attendants and the captain pushed back, arguing Mr Beckham should be removed from the plane, claiming that he’s “belligerent and non-compliant”.
Mr Beckham doesn’t stand down even after being spoken to by the captain. The other passengers have to get off the plane as airport staff are seen discussing the wide receiver.
“Can I get his signature?” one of them asks, according to The Daily Beast.
Mr Beckham both apologises and confronts passengers as they leave the plane.
“Just get off the plane,” one passenger says and is joined by others saying the same.
“F*** you,” Mr Beckham says.
“I’ve never had this happen to me,” he tells one of the police officers. When offered, he rejects a spot on the next flight.
“We’re going to have to deplane everybody on this plane, and then you’re still going to get off,” an officer tells him.
“That’s fine,” Mr Beckham replies.
“You can look at me all you want,” he tells passengers leaving the plane.
“Just get off the plane,” one says.
“There’s nothing you can ever say, ever,” Mr Beckham says, leaning forward. “You’re everything wrong with the world. Looking at me to get off a plane, for you. I would never, ever in my life, get off the plane for you, specifically you. Maybe everybody else, I would get off the plane. That s*** don’t mean nothing to me. You gon’ wait 40 minutes and I’m going to be on a private plane home. Yeah, with your fat a**. Get your a** off the plane for a second.”
“Enjoy the cheese board on the way home with your ugly a**,” he adds.
Later, Mr Beckham is alone on the plane, on the phone.
“Then a white man then gon’ look at me, talking about, ’just get off the plane.’ B****, now you made it my point to not get off the f****** plane. You couldn’t even make this s*** up,” he says.
Mr Beckham tells police, “the white man, with the red shirt on, do not let me walk by him. That’s all I’m asking”.
“Don’t slip on that, brother,” police say. Calming Mr Beckham down, the police add that it’s coming “from a place of love”.
Applause and cheers greet Mr Beckham as he reenters the airport where passengers are waiting.
No charges have been filed as a result of the incident, The Daily Beast notes.
“He was literally the last passenger off the plane,” business class passenger Carlos Guana told the outlet.
Daniel Davillier, Mr Beckham’s lawyer, said the incident had been “unnecessary,” arguing that it has been prompted by an “overzealous flight attendant”.
