Shoving a flight attendant out of the way, Burton–who was six feet tall and weighed 190 pounds–tried to smash his way into the cockpit. Still shouting incoherently about flying the plane, he broke a hole in the door with a couple of powerful kicks, then leaned into the cockpit and grabbed at the pilots. One of them pushed him back out and Burton was corralled by a flight attendant and a passenger. They led him to a vacant seat. Harvey said Burton seemed “dazed, like he didn’t know what he wanted to do.”
But Burton became enraged when a flight attendant and a male passenger tried to move him to another seat because he was sitting in an exit row. He punched the passenger in the mouth, drawing blood. A group of seven to 10 male passengers mobbed Burton in the aisle, trying to subdue him. “He was pounding these guys,” Harvey said. “I was amazed at his strength.” Pandemonium broke out as the passengers wrestled Burton to the floor and pinned him there, lying face up. At that point, Harvey said, a burly man began jumping on Burton with both feet. “He was stomping him, pounding him with his boots as hard as he could,” Harvey said. “I said, ‘Hey, cool it. The guy’s subdued.’ [But] he just looked at me, couldn’t have cared less, and kept pounding him.”
Burton died from the injuries he sustained in the melee. When police boarded the plane in Salt Lake City, Officer William Woods reported, Burton was unconscious but passengers were still afraid he’d revive and go berserk. According to police reports obtained by NEWSWEEK, one man had his foot on Burton’s head and another had his foot on the young man’s throat. Gravely injured, Burton died on the way to a local hospital. Although an autopsy found traces of marijuana in his system, the medical examiner said pot was an “unlikely explanation” for his bizarre behavior.
The question now is whether the angry passengers went too far–and whether federal authorities dropped the ball. After a brief FBI investigation in which Dean Harvey was never interviewed, the U.S. Attorney in Salt Lake City, Paul M. Warner, ruled that no one would be charged. The decision outraged Burton’s mother, Janet, who said her son had no history of violence. “He was beaten and strangled and kicked,” said the family’s lawyer, Kent Spence. “We’d like to know how this could have happened to this young man.” Last week, a spokesperson for the U.S. attorney’s office said witness Harvey had finally been interviewed and that “several other” passengers had volunteered statements as well. Although the case was still officially closed, it seemed likely that the strange death of a troubled young man would get a second look.
