Parenting

Man Threatens To Break A 7-Year-Old's Legs For Kicking His Seat On A Plane

by Valerie Williams
Image via Shutterstock

An Australian man was fined for threatening to break a child’s legs for kicking the back of his seat on a plane.

We hear a lot of stories about passengers being impatient with babies and kids on airplanes. Obviously, the close quarters make it very difficult to spare fellow fliers of every annoyance a child can produce and it’s understandable that people might be irritated by ill behavior. Most handle it with grace while some turn to a flight attendant to complain. Then there are those who go straight psycho like an Australian man who threatened to break a 7-year-old’s legs for kicking the back of his seat. Yikes.

According to The Courier Mail, Brett Walter John Gale, age 32, was fined $750 for terrorizing a mother and her child on a Virgin Australia flight last August. He pled guilty to offensive and disorderly conduct.

He started in on the child shortly after take-off telling her to “stop kicking the fucking seat”. After landing, he told the child’s mother “They kicked the seat the whole time; discipline the little ­c—s”.

Holy shit.

As Gale was about to leave the plane, he turned to the child and said “Go on, kick the fucking seat again and I will break your fucking legs”. He told the mother to try disciplining her “fucking kids”. By this point, a male passenger tried to calm Gale and told him to leave the child alone. Gale responded by challenging him to a fight out on the tarmac.

Well, this guy sounds like an absolute delight. Not only is he lobbing the F word at a child, he’s threatening violence to both the kid and another passenger. Lovely. This is far beyond the garden-variety passenger irritated with a child on a plane. This man sounds like a total lunatic.

We all know how hard it is to take small kids on a plane and knowing how their age-appropriate behavior can be grating to others in such close quarters can be incredibly stressful. When your kid cries because her ears hurt during take-off and you want to disappear because you know everyone is probably losing patience you never imagine someone might toss a violent threat at you or your child. This story is next-level frightening for parents traveling with kids.

It seems like Gale got off pretty easy considering the horrible things he said to a little kid. We don’t dispute that having your seat kicked repeatedly is incredibly annoying but it in no way deserved the over-blown reaction Gale had. Hopefully, he’s learned his lesson and will hold his childish temper in the next time he flies and a kid has the nerve to act like….well, a kid.