Black Artist Alleges Assault By JetBlue Attendant
HOUSTON, TX -- Just a month after JetBlue flight attendant, Steven Slater, spewed profanities at passengers on a plane as it landed at New York's Kennedy Airport, another JetBlue employee has had a meltdown. Black Smoke Music Worldwide founder, Kerry Douglas, (whose tune "I Believe" by James Fortune, Shawn McLemore & Zacardi Cortez is #1 on Billboard's Hot Gospel Songs chart this week), says that a JetBlue employee at Houston's Hobby Airport assaulted him a week ago.
Douglas has gone public now because he feels the airline and the police didn't take the assault seriously. The incident took place Friday, August 27th when Douglas was to take a 7 a.m. flight to New York City where he was to stage a Sirius Satellite Radio in-studio concert that afternoon with several Black Smoke artists such as James Fortune. Around 6:31 that morning, Douglas was passing his suitcase to a baggage handler when the JetBlue attendant told him that it was too close to the plane's departure time for his luggage to accompany the flight. A verbal exchange ensued between Douglas and the agitated employee. Douglas then told the handler that he was tape recording the conversation with his phone. Then, the handler slapped the phone from Douglas' hand and ran away. "This man deliberately tried to provoke me in order to get me arrested but I remained calm," Douglas says. "I felt very disrespected. I then called the police and filed a report. There were three witnesses there but the police didn't put any of that in the report. The man admitted that he hit me but that's also not in the report." Afterwards, Douglas ended up spending $1,602.40 with another airline for a one-way ticket to get to New York and had to replace his phone for $542.00. He called JetBlue's corporate office to file a complaint but no one from JetBlue apologized. After contacting JetBlue again via their website, their Representative Debbie Castleton, Corporate Customer Support, JetBlue Airways acknowledge that they had no record of Mr. Douglas' complaint. "There's a double standard here," Douglas says. "If I had raised my hands and hit the JetBlue employee as he did me, I would have been arrested. The man who assaulted me is still working for JetBlue and is left in a position to assault other passengers. I'm not giving this up. I am taking this all the way because the police report was inaccurate it did not report the facts. The JetBlue employee did admit to assaulting me but it was not in the police report. The HPD officer did interview several eyewitnesses that confirmed the assault and that information was also missing from the report. In my opinion this is a cover up by JetBlue and the Houston Police Department. This is America and no one should be able to assault an individual without consequences."
