Naked man climbs into moving jet in Los Angeles

[media]

Naked man climbs into moving jet in Los Angeles

Naked man climbs into moving jet in Los Angeles
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A Canadian man, angry that
he was refused a plane ticket to Australia at Los Angeles
International Airport, stripped naked, sprinted across the
tarmac and climbed into the wheel well of a moving jumbo jet,
officials said Wednesday.
Pilots of the Qantas Airways flight stopped the plane. The
man was coaxed out of the wheel well and arrested for
trespassing, said airport spokeswoman Nancy Castles.
"This was an extremely dangerous thing for him to do. If he
had continued to cling in there with the aircraft taking off at
over 200 miles per hour, he might have fallen out and
could have been sucked up by an engine," she said.
"If he had survived that and was in the wheel well when the
landing gear was retracted, he could have been crushed by the
mechanism. And if not he very likely would have frozen to death
during the 15 1/2 hour flight at 30,000 feet
while wearing no clothes."
The man, Neil Melly, 31, tried to buy a one-way ticket on
the Qantas flight Monday evening, but was turned down
because he could not supply a valid credit card, Castles said.
Later, he managed to climb over an airport fence, topped by
three strands of barbed wire, without injury and was spotted by
a ramp worker "running, naked, full-speed" toward the plane.
Castles said a check by authorities found that Melly had
been reported missing to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and
was suffering from bi-polar disorder, a manic-depressive
illness.
REUTERS