‘Drunk’ Utah man threatens woman with razor.
An reportedly intoxicated Utah man is accused of going berserk on a JetBlue flight, holding a razor to a woman’s throat while telling her husband to “get the f**k out of here.”
Merrill Fackrell, 41, from Syracuse, Utah, was charged Tuesday with a dangerous weapon on or near an aircraft and carrying a weapon on a flight, prosecutors with the US Justice Department’s District of Utah office said.
According to reports, he boarded Flight B6871 at John F. Kennedy International Airport bound for Salt Lake City with a concealed straight-edge razor marketed to barbers.
During the flight, he put his hand in front of the video screen of the woman sitting next to him and told her to pause her movie, prosecutors said.
The woman took off her headphones and realized that Fackrell was holding the razor to her throat.
Fackrell, who was sitting in the window seat, then stood up and started yelling, “She’s going to be OK” and “No one needs to worry,” according to a complaint filed on Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Utah.
He also told the woman’s husband, who was sitting in the aisle seat, to “get the f**k out of here.”
As the husband went to the front of the plane in search of a flight attendant, his wife lunged into the aisle to escape from Fackrell.
After the couple moved to the front of the plane, a passenger sitting across the aisle got the suspect to put down the razor.
The object was then secured by flight attendants and Fackrell was arrested upon arrival at SLC.
Magistrate Judge Daphne A. Oberg of the US District Court in Utah on Wednesday ordered Fackrell held.
His defense had argued for him to be released to his parents’ Utah residence — citing a lack of a criminal record and a need for medical treatment.
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