A normal Sunday of travel turned frightening for a Lawrenceville husband and wife this month at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport.
Atlanta police said the couple were walking off the plane train used to transport thousands of people each day through the busy airport when a stranger came up behind them and violently struck the husband in the back of the head.
“He knocked me down, I’m surprised he knocked me down,” the victim told an officer in bodycam video obtained Thursday by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
According to an incident report, officers responded to Concourse A on May 7 about reports of a fight in progress. The footage shows an officer running through the airport and approaching the train platform just in time for the tail end of the chaos.
There, a victim and a bystander were “restraining” the suspect, who was identified as Ernest Bonner of Elk Grove, California, the report said.
“Relax! Relax! Relax!” an officer said as the suspect was placed in handcuffs, according to the footage. The bystander said Bonner was acting aggressively and had punched the victim, the report states.
Credit: Atlanta Police Department
Credit: Atlanta Police Department
Moments later, the officer was heard asking a crowd of people observing the scene, “Who got hit?” The victim and his wife then came over to speak to the officer.
“When he (the suspect) first got on the train he was looking at me. It was so strange,” the woman told police. “I knew something was up.”
Bonner was evaluated by emergency personnel at the scene because of his high heart rate, the report stated. He was then booked into the Clayton County Jail on a charge of simple assault, police said.
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