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| SOUTHWEST AIRLINES BOEING 737-7H4 N418WN (MSN 29823) |
Police confronted Mary MacCarthy, 42, when she travelled to Denver with her 10-year-old daughter for her brother’s funeral. According to MacCarthy, the cops informed her that flight attendants had suspected her of human trafficking.
In her lawsuit filed in Denver Federal Court last Thursday, the mother claimed the suspicions were “based on a racist assumption about a mixed-race family". Southwest Airlines employees had called the police from the air “for no reason other than the different colour of her daughter’s skin from her own,” according to the lawsuit.
The lawsuit reads: “There was no basis to believe that Ms. MacCarthy was trafficking her daughter, and the only basis for the Southwest employee’s call was the belief that Ms. MacCarthy’s daughter could not possibly be her daughter because she is a biracial child.”
The flight attendant who called the police had reportedly found it suspicious that the mother and daughter had boarded the plane at the last minute and that MacCarthy had tried to get them seats together. The employee also reportedly found it odd that the two did not speak during the flight and that MacCarthy had told her daughter not to talk to the flight crew.
The single mother had just lost her older brother at the time, who had been like a father to her daughter. They had flown from Los Angeles and hurriedly changed planes to make their connection from San Jose to Denver.
MacCarthy said she was blindsided when the flight attendant and Denver police intercepted them as they got off the plane. The “significant questioning” brought MacCarthy’s daughter to tears, and the two were subject to “extreme emotional distress,” the lawsuit said.
The mother added that the incident was “extremely traumatic” for her daughter. According to the lawsuit, the young girl “goes silent and does not speak about” the incident if it is mentioned.
MacCarthy told People at the time: “I want Southwest Airlines and the Denver police to be held accountable for what is undoubtedly a case of racial profiling involving a 10-year-old Black girl who was already suffering the worst day in her life - a death in her family.
“An incident like this can scar a child for life.”
Southwest Airlines said an email: "We don’t have anything to add right now on this pending litigation."
Story sourced from here
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