How a California woman slipped through security and made it on a plane to Hawaii, according to documents

The Christmas Eve stowaway who boarded a Delta Air Lines flight to Hawaii slipped past both a TSA ID check and a gate agent with no ticket, according to public records obtained by CNN.

The stowaway was identified as Shemaiah Patrice Small, 33, of California, according to the documents. Small snuck past a TSA ID check the night before Christmas Eve and wandered the airport allegedly barefoot before she tried to hitch a ride on Delta Air Lines Flight 487 from Seattle-Tacoma International Airport to Honolulu the next day. During boarding, she managed to slip past a gate agent by hiding behind another passenger but was discovered aboard the aircraft sitting in someone else’s seat.

Delta employees noticed Small and asked her to deboard.

Small fled the gate before law enforcement could arrive, according to airport officials, and when police later located her in the airport, she was arrested and charged with criminal trespassing in the first degree and making false statements to public servants.

She was identified through a fingerprint database, after giving false names and information to law enforcement.

The Transportation Security Administration and the Port of Seattle confirmed the incident to CNN.

Stowaway situations don’t happen often, but each represents a lapse in aviation security. And the incidents can be deadly for the potential stowaway when they attempt to hide outside of the passenger cabin. Other times, like in Small’s case, they face serious charges. These types of incidents raise alarms about problems within the aviation security system, experts say.

Getting past security, staying overnight

Small slipped through the line divider at Checkpoint 3 at the Seattle airport on December 23 at about 9:06 p.m., the public records show.

An officer reviewing security footage observed she slipped through a line divider to cut to the front of the checkpoint waiting line. She stood at the front of the line for several minutes.

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“I watched (Small) duck underneath a line dividing stanchion and bypass the portion of TSA screening that checks ID and boarding pass,” the officer’s account read. She “proceeded through a metal detector and was screened before she proceeds to the secure side of the airport.”

Then, several hours prior to ending up on the plane, Small walked around the airport, according to police who reviewed airport footage after the incident. She spent several hours apparently wandering – getting on trains and coming back to where she started in the airport. Then she would pick up items at different stores and move them around, the report alleges.

The Delta flight she eventually boarded wasn’t her first attempt to get on a plane.

One officer viewed footage showing her trying to “get into line as if to board a flight at least two times.” She tried on December 23 at 10:12 p.m. at gate N15 and again at 10:47 p.m. at gate N9, where she stood next to the gate agent and took a step towards the jetway before turning around and seemingly deciding not to board.

Then, at about 12:40 a.m. on Christmas Eve, an officer responded to a call about a suspicious person.

That call was from Sherwin Shayegan, known to police as the “Piggyback Bandit.” The responding officer said he had “numerous contacts” with Shayegan in the past. He’s been previously convicted for forcing high school boys into piggyback rides and for giving children money after he massages them.

Shayegan described the female and pointed her out to law enforcement.

Small was barefoot when she walked away from Shayegan and the officer, the records show. Shayegan told police he didn’t think Small had a ticket because she had a bottle of Fireball whiskey on her and he believed she stole it, the police report says.

The officer followed Small down the terminal until she went into a women’s restroom. Two officers waited 15 to 20 minutes for her to exit and speak with her.

Finally, an officer entered the bathroom and contacted Small, who said she needed more time. Officers left the bathroom and didn’t have further contact with her until after she deplaned the Delta flight.

Boarding the flight

Once they had boarded, a Delta customer service agent reported to law enforcement there were too many passengers aboard flight 487 departing to Honolulu at 12:45 p.m., according to the public records.

On the aircraft with the door closed, a woman, later identified as Small, was sitting in a ticketed passenger’s seat and that was how Delta was able to discover her aboard the Airbus A321neo.

Small told a Delta agent her last name was Smith and said she did not have her ID, police reports show. Small was then told to follow the agent and avoided questions about how she got onboard. Police had not yet arrived at the gate.

The Delta agent followed her after she walked away from them until she entered the unsecure side of the airport, the public records show.

At approximately 1:07 p.m., Port of Seattle Police was dispatched to Gate B1 where Flight 487 was parked, for “suspicious circumstances.” Perry Cooper, a Port of Seattle official, said the person “ran out of the aircraft” before law enforcement arrived at 1:13 p.m. Police records show she walked off toward baggage claim.

Public records show it took about 50 minutes from the time Small refused to show Delta agents her ID to when she was detained and read her Miranda rights at 1:55 p.m. Police found her washing her face in a women’s restroom near a hall for arriving flights.

When law enforcement approached her, records say she gave them a fake name and age, among other false details.

A police officer detailed their difficulties in understanding Small in a case report.

“Based on my training and experience, not knowing how to spell a given name or correct, usually suggests that a subject is lying about their name,” the officer wrote in the case report. “If a subject is dishonest about who they are, the subject is usually dishonest about their side of the story.”

Small was charged with trespassing and false statements.

Days later, she was arrested again at the Seattle airport on December 27 for criminal trespass without a ticket for a flight after an officer recognized her from her first arrest, court records show. Small has a hearing on Tuesday.

CNN reached out to Small and her attorney for comment.

Aviation incidents raise alarms

There’s recently been a string of aviation security incidents in the US.

Another stowaway boarded a Delta airplane Thanksgiving week. That unticketed passenger made it all the way from New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport to Paris before she was eventually arrested.

Also on Christmas Eve, a body was found in the wheel well of a United Airlines plane after it traveled from Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport and landed in Maui.

Last week, two people were found dead in the wheel well of a JetBlue plane from New York City after it landed at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport.

While the reports don’t give a sense of Small’s motives, experts say there are many reasons why a person might stow away on an aircraft. There’s not just one reason that fits every bill, said Alexandra James, an analysis output manager at Osprey Flight Solutions, which analyzes security risks in the aviation sector.

James said sometimes, the cases she’s seen include travelers who can’t afford a ticket, suffer from mental health issues motivating a person to get on a flight and other reasons.

“I don’t think we can say that there’s any one problem, but it just goes to show that aviation security personnel really need to keep all these different issues in view,” James said. “They can’t just be thinking about terrorism. They need to be thinking about mental health issues. They need to be thinking about people with other stuff going on that may potentially cause a cause a threat.”

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