He Lit Up, Then Ignited Flare-Up by Assaulting Stewardess, Court Told

A mortician exploded into a profane rage and assaulted a stewardess after he was told he could not smoke on a cross-country flight from Boston to Los Angeles, a prosecutor said on the opening day of the passenger’s trial.

Outlining the case against James Tabacca for a jury in U.S. District Court, Assistant U.S. Atty. Robin Scroggie said the trial was “about a woman who was physically assaulted for trying to do her job.”

But Tabacca’s lawyer, Deputy Federal Public Defender Marilyn Butler, insisted that Tabacca “never touched” the stewardess during TWA Flight 853 on Dec. 30, 1987. She said dozens of smokers on the flight had created “chaos” because airline officials had banned smoking in all but six seats of the aircraft without giving passengers an opportunity to switch flights.

Tabacca, 34, of Universal City, is charged with one count of interfering with the duties of a flight crew member. His trial is expected to draw attention to a federal regulation that allows airline officials to ban smoking on any flight if there are a sufficient number of nonsmokers.

Butler hopes to show jurors that the redesignation of smoking sections on Flight 853 was so poorly handled that the passengers were out of control and that Tabacca was wrongly accused of assault in the ensuing chaos.

“James Tabacca was trying to stop thinking about having a cigarette and ignore the chaos,” Butler told the jury. “People were yelling. People were screaming. There was profanity back there (in coach).

“One stewardess was even walking around with a fire extinguisher, saying, ‘Where are the smokers? I’ll put ‘em out,’ ” Butler said.

Scroggie told the jury that the no-smoking announcement was made 10 minutes before the plane’s doors closed, again when it was taxiing for takeoff and a third time when it was in the air. He contends that smokers could have switched flights after the first announcement if they wished.

But Tabacca, who was seated in the business class section between first class and coach, lit a cigarette shortly after the no-smoking light went out, Scroggie said.

When flight service manager Pamela Martinez knelt beside him and asked him to extinguish it, he “said in vulgar language that he didn’t care about the (federal) regulations, that he was going to smoke anyway,” Scroggie said.

Tabacca grabbed Martinez’s right arm, wrenched it behind her, jerked her forward and then shoved her into the plane’s bulkhead, bruising and scraping her, Scroggie said. The captain had a word with Tabacca, but he continued to smoke intermittently throughout the flight, Scroggie said.

Before he got off the plane, Tabacca rammed his shoulder into Martinez and shoved his luggage into her thigh, Scroggie said.