American Airlines flight attendant filmed minors using toilet, US says

An American Airlines flight attendant was arrested Thursday, accused of using his cell phone in an attempt to secretly record a 14-year-old girl as she used the restroom during a domestic flight in September, federal prosecutors said.

The flight attendant, Estes Carter Thompson III, 37, of Charlotte, NC, was arrested in Lynchburg, Virginia, and charged with attempted sexual exploitation of children and possession of child pornography after investigators found evidence that he had secretly recorded video of four other girls when they used the restroom on American Airlines flights last year, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Massachusetts said.

“The deeply disturbing behavior alleged here is something no parent or child should ever have to worry about while traveling,” said Joshua S. Levy, the acting U.S. attorney for the District of Massachusetts. said in a statement. “Mr. Thompson allegedly used his position to prey on and covertly capture innocent children, including unaccompanied minors, while working in a vulnerable condition on board flights.

According to a criminal complaint, Mr. Thompson was working as a flight attendant on an American Airlines flight from Charlotte to Boston on September 2. About halfway through the flight, the 14-year-old girl got up to use a restroom in the main cabin, the document says.

She had been waiting for a while when Mr. Thompson told her she could use the bathroom in the first class, which was empty, according to the complaint. Before the girl entered the restroom, Mr. Thompson told her the toilet seat was broken and he needed to wash his hands, according to the charging document.

Once in the restroom, prosecutors said, the girl noticed red stickers stuck to the lid of the toilet seat that read: “INOPERATIVE CATERING EQUIPMENT” and “REMOVE FROM OPERATION.” One of the stickers had the words “SEAT BROKEN” handwritten in black ink, the complaint said.

While getting dressed after going to the bathroom, the girl noticed an iPhone with a flashlight on sticking out from under the stickers. According to the complaint, she used her phone to take a photo of it, and when she returned to her seat, she saw the flight attendant enter the restroom behind her. She returned to her seat and told her parents what she had seen, the complaint said.

Her parents told the other flight attendants what had happened. They notified the captain, who reported the episode to law enforcement personnel on the scene, prosecutors said.

After the plane landed at Boston's Logan International Airport, law enforcement officers who confronted Mr. Thompson noticed that his phone had been restored to factory settings, with all photos, videos, text messages and other signs of activity deleted, the complaint said. . While searching Mr. Thompson's suitcase, officers found 11 stickers reading “INOPERATIVE CATERING EQUIPMENT,” according to the complaint.

A search of Mr. Thompson's iCloud account later revealed evidence of four other cases in which he had recorded minors using restrooms on American Airlines flights in 2023, prosecutors said. The search also found hundreds of images of child sexual abuse generated by artificial intelligence, and more than 50 images of a 9-year-old girl taken as an unaccompanied minor on an American Airlines flight from Charlotte to San Antonio in July flew. 2023, according to the complaint.

Mr. Thompson was immediately terminated after the flight in September and has not worked since, American Airlines said. It was not immediately clear whether he had an attorney.

The 14-year-old girl's parents filed a federal lawsuit against American Airlines in December. John Buric, a lawyer representing the family, said Thursday that Mr. Thompson's actions were “despicable.”

In a statement after Mr. Thompson's arrest, American Airlines said it “takes these allegations very seriously.”

“They do not reflect our airline or our core mission to care for people,” the airline said. “We have fully cooperated with law enforcement authorities in the investigation because nothing is more important than the safety and security of our customers and our team.”

According to jail records, Mr. Thompson remained in custody Thursday at the Lynchburg Adult Detention Center in Virginia, and prosecutors said he would remain in custody until an unscheduled court appearance in Virginia. Mr. Thompson is also expected to appear in federal court in Boston later.

He faces up to 30 years in prison if convicted of attempted child sexual exploitation, and up to 20 years in prison if convicted of possession of child pornography, prosecutors said.

Jodi Cohen, special agent in charge of the FBI's Boston field office, said in a statement that Mr. Thompson had “repeatedly attacked unsuspecting children to sexually exploit them for his own gratification.”

“What Mr. Thompson is accused of is outrageous,” she added, “and, in our opinion, calculated.”