We seem to accept airport security as simply a necessary evil that everyone has to go through. If we want to travel across the country and get there in four hours instead of three days, it’s understood ahead of time that we’re probably going to encounter a few minor inconveniences along the way.
But what happens when one of those minor inconveniences becomes a major problem? That’s what seems to have happened to a 10-year-old girl recently, who was traveling with her dad from North Carolina to California over the holidays. During the airport screening process, a TSA agent seemed to get a bit too invasive and handsy with the young girl, with a security pat down that lasted nearly two minutes.
It began when 10-year-old Vendela mistakingly left a Capri Sun in her bag before entering the security line at Raleigh-Durham International airport. The situation could have ended with the security agent simply asking her to pitch it. But instead, Vendela was put through the wringer of an invasive pat down.
“I know it’s to keep everybody on the plane safe, but she kept patting me down,” Vendela said. “Pat down, pat down. It was like, over and over.”
Vendela’s dad, Kevin Payne, tried to lighten the situation by making funny faces at his daughter throughout the process. But inside, all Vendela wanted to do was scream.
“My goal was just to clear security as quickly as possible so we could make our flight even though I knew that, in my mind, they shouldn’t be doing what they were doing,” Payne said. “I didn’t want to make an issue of it there or then because it wasn’t the time or place, and I didn’t want to further traumatize my daughter.”
And to think, all of this over a Capri Sun, one of the more dangerous liquids known to man, apparently. Plus, that straw is so damn hard to poke through the hole. What’s that all about?
(Via NBC San Diego)