Loud Cell Phone Talker Arrested
A loud woman who was yapping loudly for hours on an AmTrak quiet car has been arrested after getting belligerent.
A loud woman who was yapping loudly for hours on an AmTrak quiet car has been arrested after getting belligerent. She’s also gone viral.
A woman who was escorted off an Amtrak train by police this weekend after she allegedly refused to stop talking loudly on her cell-phone has the Internet cheering her fate.
Civilians and quiet-car champions are supporting her ejection for violating policy at high volume during the 16-hour journey. It doesn’t help her cause that she became belligerent when confronted about it by one of her fellow passengers.
KOMO News reports that Lakeysha Beard says she felt “disrespected” by the incident, though passengers said it was Beard who was being rude by refusing to stop yapping while sitting in one of the train’s designated quiet cars. She had not stopped talking since the train pulled out of Oakland, California, 16 hours before it reached Salem, Oregon, when a passenger confronted her about the talking. That’s when Beard got “aggressive,” KATU reports, and conductors stopped the train so that police could remove her and charge her with disorderly conduct.
Amtrak created quiet cars in 2001 when a group of passengers who rode the Philadelphia to D.C. route every morning asked if they could reserve a car where cell-phone loudmouths weren’t welcome. Ever since, the rare havens of quiet have become a battlefield between silence-loving rule-followers and rebellious cell-phone addicts. Gawker suggested, not without a dose of sincerity, that the cops who removed Beard from the train were heroes, and that Beard should be charged with “unspeakable crimes against humanity and sentenced to life on some distant planet where there are no reception bars, ever.”
According to a very scientific reader poll at The Huffington Post, 77 percent of people were happy the woman was hauled off the train. And CNN personality Anderson Cooper blasted the woman on his “ridiculist” last night, asking “What could someone possibly talk about for 16 hours?” He even compared being stuck on the train with a person who would do such a thing to the “fifth circle of hell.”
GMA’s report is amusing–and the artistic rendering quite kind:
KVAL Has footage of the arrest:
It’s bad enough that these people are so inconsiderate of their fellow passengers to necessitate the creation of “quiet cars” to begin with. It’s simply unconscionable to then get on one of these cars and behave in this manner.
She deserved a Tasing too.
Oh, I can believe it. At the gym I go to, I routinely see folks, well, women folks (sorry ladies, but there it is), on the machines on the phone. How they can do both on some of those machines is a mystery to me. But they do.
Mannerless woman. Let’s hope she doesn’t have children, that she’s passed these manners on to.
I’ve overheard many conversations of cell phone users and many I’d just as soon not wanting to hear. Why do people feel the need to share all of their most personal information with the entire world! Button it up folks!
Life imitating art: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xut__-uXG8U&feature=related
What kind of phone was she using? A sixteen-hour talk-time is impressive!
She deserved a Tasing too.
This may be the first time I’ve ever not only agreed with michael, but want it to go even further. Multiple tasings were called for, and perhaps pepper spraying.
J.
Yes, because we don’t already have enough problems with cops handing out extrajudicial punishments.
Stormy, there are exceptions for every rule. In this case, “pour encourager les autres” would be well served.
Hey, at least I didn’t call for K-9s or bullets.
J.
The last time I rode Amtrak from DC to NYC, a woman got on in Philly, sat behind me and proceeded to engage in one unending phone call all the way into Penn Station. I suppressed my desire to start commenting on her conversation with her ( I presumed) boyfriend.
It’s sweet that Jay Tea and Michael Reynolds have made up, just in time for the end of the world.
Funny. On immigration, you’re one of those “The law is the law and must be obeyed no matter what” types. One might think you switch back and forth based on which position is most punishing to minorities at any particular second.
Stormy, the rule on the car was “no loud cell phone conversations.” The rule needs to be enforced.
And while I’m a proud New Hampshirite, I respect and embrace Texas’ philosophy that “some people just need killin’.” Likewise, some people just need Tasering. Kind of like the old joke about the farmer whacking the mule with a 2×4 — he wasn’t punishing him, just trying to get his attention.
Me, I have my own way of dealing with that sort of thing. I just start participating in the conversation. And I’m most creative.
But if a cop had Tasered her without there being an absolute need, I’d want that cop punished. Dock his pay one minute for each second the Tasering lasted. And no donut privileges for at least an hour.
“Pour encourager les autres,” of course. Must be consistent…
J.
Well, for those of you calling for the taser, I hope the next time you got pull over by the cops for breaking the law you get tase. I would love to spray or tase everyone I stop for breaking the law, I wish you guys were more then just talk.