PHILADELPHIA — A college student returning to school after the winter break fell victim to a prank at Philadelphia’s airport by a Transportation Security Administration worker who pretended to plant a plastic bag of white powder in her carry-on luggage.
The worker is no longer employed by the TSA after the incident this month, a spokeswoman said.
Rebecca Solomon, 22, a University of Michigan student, wrote in a column for her campus newspaper that she was having her bags screened Jan. 5 before her flight to Detroit when the employee stopped her, reached into her laptop computer bag and pulled out the plastic bag, demanding to know where she had gotten the powder.
“He let me stutter through an explanation for the longest minute of my life,” Solomon wrote. “Tears streamed down my face as I pleaded with him to understand that I’d never seen this baggie before.”
A short time later, she said, the worker smiled and said it was his. He “waved the baggie at me and told me he was kidding, that I should’ve seen the look on my face,” she said.
Solomon said she asked to speak to a supervisor and filled out a complaint; she was told the man was training TSA workers to detect contraband. Two days later she was told he had been disciplined.
TSA spokeswoman Ann Davis told The Philadelphia Inquirer the employee was no longer with the agency.
