Word: teethe
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...that's when he bit me. Right there." Cristina Jones extends her hand to show the teeth marks below her thumb on her left hand, where alleged shoe bomber Richard Reid bit her in their struggle aboard Flight 63 high over the Atlantic last December. Hermis Moutardier bears wounds from her battle with Reid too. They're just not so visible...
...service, and Moutardier, who was picking up trays, cruised the aisles looking for the source of the burning smell. She discovered Reid, seated alone by a window, trying to light a match. She sternly warned him that smoking was not allowed. He promised to stop, then began picking his teeth with the blackened matchstick. A few minutes later, she saw him bend over in his seat. "I thought, He's smoking," Moutardier recalls. "It got me mad. I was talking to him, saying, 'Excuse me,' but he just ignored me. I leaned in and said, 'What are you doing...
...doing. I just knew it in my mind," she says. "I yelled, 'Stop it!' and grabbed him around the upper body. I tried to pull him up. And that's when he bit me." She screamed, and passengers started crawling over seats to restrain him. But his teeth would not let go. "I couldn't get my hand out of his mouth. I thought he was going to rip my hand apart it hurt so bad. It was surreal," she says. "I saw all these men coming ... and I knew...
Even after Reid was restrained and sedated, he continued to taunt the crew. Moutardier says that whenever he heard the voice of a crew member, he would open his eyes and glare. When a flight attendant offered him water, he bared his teeth. "At one point, he wanted to get loose; he was rocking and praying. I got real scared," says Moutardier. No one knew if Reid had accomplices on board. There were no clear procedures to guide the crew of 12, so they improvised. They barred anyone from standing up without permission for the remaining three hours...
Their families also suffered. Jones found it difficult to explain to her son Ian what happened on the Paris flight, but she knew she had to explain the bandage on her hand and the marks from Reid's teeth that are still visible below her thumb. "I just told him that a bad man on my flight was trying to hurt people, and in trying to stop him, he hurt me." The 7-year-old said he was proud of his mom, but it was obvious he was also worried for her. In the weeks following the aborted attack...