Naomi at court today.Photo: Getty Images
Naomi Campbell received 200 hours of community service for her outburst on a British Airways flight over lost bag back in April. She pleaded guilty at her trial in London today to two counts of assaulting a police officer and one count of disorderly conduct and using threatening, abusive words or behavior to the cabin crew. She also has to pay a fine of about $4,600. Good for her for staying out of jail!
We had only heard sketchy speculation of what exactly took place on that flight, but witnesses divulged the story in full, arresting (zing!) detail in the courtroom today. Campbell initially freaked out, you see, because the bag she learned was missing contained an Yves Saint Laurent dress she was contracted to wear on a talk show in the U.S. This occurred, of course, at Heathrow’s Terminal Five during its “teething problems,” as the London Times delicately puts it, when they lost basically everyone’s bags.
The captain bravely left the safety of his cockpit to tell Campbell personally her bag hadn’t made it onto the plane. According to witness Melanie Parrish, Campbell just started yelling over the captain as he explained her options. She continued her diva fit on her BlackBerry. “They have lost my f****** bags, get me another flight, get the press, get me my lawyer,” she wailed into her weapon of choice. She demanded the captain fetch her bags from the runway himself. That obviously wasn’t going to happen, so when he’d had enough of her, and left, she yelled, “You are a racist, you wouldn’t be doing this if I was white.”
Eventually the police had to be called, and when it came time to forcibly remove her, Parrish said, “She went berserk, thrashing her arms around uncontrollably and striking [police officer] Eastick on the arm with her phone.” Oh, the good ol’ phone whack! How could he not see it coming? Adding insult to injury, she then spit on that same police officer. And kicked him in the thigh and a few other places, etc., etc. Point is, she was thrashing and her limbs are long and, we imagine, unwieldy.
So in the end she got off pretty easy, as usual. And you know, it’s funny — a model doing community service is only interesting the first time around but a model hitting people with BlackBerrys never gets old.
Naomi Campbell Sentenced to Community Service (Update1) [Bloomberg]
Naomi Campbell escapes jail over PC assault and tirade on BA jet [Times U.K.]
