David Truong was forced to intervene to keep a drunk male model from harassing passengers on a flight from Chicago to Orange County on Tuesday.
“You see stuff like this on TV and the news, but you never think it’s going to happen to you,” Truong told the Orange County Register Wednesday.
The disturbance was caused by Pakistani American Arash Durrani, 26, an actor, model and the owner of a clothing line with homes in Virginia and California. He apparently became drunk shortly after United Flight 473 left O’Hare International for Orange County’s John Wayne Airport.
About 45 minutes after the flight began Durrani began pacing around the plane bothering passengers, Truong recalls.
“He was inappropriately touching women and aggressively harassing people,” Truong told OC Register. “He was walking in and out of the restroom, and at one point I was scared that he may have done something or gotten something in the restroom, so I asked him to sit.”
The passenger who received the brunt of Durrani’s attentions early in the episode was Nona Pitts, owner of a beauty salon in Brea.
“He grabbed my hair and lifted my head up and said, ‘I want to kiss you”,” said Pitts. “He was on something — and a lot of alcohol that they probably shouldn’t have given him.”
She noticed that the bag Durrani had carried on board contained a lot of prescription drugs.
“Everyone was getting annoyed with him,” she said. “He was completely wasted. He had three straight Jack Daniel’s and a beer, and he was getting another drink.”
“People are telling him to sit down,” she recalled. “He’s bugging the flight attendants, wanting more alcohol. Now he’s getting belligerent. He gets up in front of a couple guys’ faces and they tell him to sit down. They escort him back, and he gets back up.”
She recalled the flight attendants telling Durrani to stay in his seat and threatening to call a marshal if he didn’t calm down.
The pilots remained in the cabin throughout the episode, according to Truong.
When Durrani started scaring children on the plane, Truong decided he needed to be physically restrained. He and other male passengers struggled to tie him up with their belts.
“He was unbelievably strong,” Truong said. “I was on his chest, and three other guys were holding his arms and legs.”
Durrani also became violent.
“He was trying to punch us, kick us,” Truong said. “He broke a chair.”
He and other passengers held Durrani down for nearly three of the flight’s four hours. In an effort to calm Durrani a doctor who happened to be on the flight injected him with Valium.
“He would go in and out of consciousness, but every time he came around he would try to fight again,” Truong said.
Once the flight landed at John Wayne FBI agents boarded the plane and arrested Durrani. They also detained the passengers who had restrained him for an hour for questioning. Durrani will be charged with the federal offense of interfering with a flight crew, said an FBI spokeswoman.
“I just know the next time I fly, I’m bringing duct tape,” said Truong.
Truong, a Vietnamese American, lives in Westminster and owns Mimi’s Jewelry in Fountain Valley.
Durrani is set to appear in the upcoming indie martial arts film Duel of Legends, according to his IMDB.com bio. The film is the fifth directed by former Argentinian MMA fighter Héctor Echavarría. It will co-star Quinton “Rampage” Jackson, the former UFC champ who played B.A. Baracus in The A-Team movie two years ago. Durrani also describes himself as Orange County’s leading event host.
His agent Sheila Di Marco said Wednesday that she had not heard about the incident.
Durrani was scheduled to be arraigned in federal court Thursday.
