A 62-year-old woman was arrested at the San Francisco International Airport for trying to sneak onto flights at least thrice, authorities said Wednesday.
The law enforcement officials said Marilyn Jean Hartman managed to pass by an agent who was checking boarding passes at Mineta San Jose International Airport by slipping through with a family. However, the crew members caught her after they found the passenger numbers onboard were off.
She was arrested previously thrice for stowing.
Hartman had told police previously that she had cancer and wanted to go to Hawaii to enjoy the warm weather. However, according to San Mateo County District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe, Hartman is a cancer survivor and is cured of the disease. He also said that said that there was no evidence of mental illness. "She's not delusional, she's not confrontational, this is not a woman who says, 'I know what the law is but I'm going to gonna violate it anyway.' There's no anger expressed. It causes me to have concern about why she keeps coming back," Wagstaffe told SF Weekly.
Hartman was given a 24-month probation after she pleaded no contest Wednesday in a Los Angeles courtroom of willfully and unlawfully entering the city as a stowaway on an aircraft, a misdemeanor, reports the Associated Press. She was told to stay away from the LA airport unless she has a ticket to board a flight.
Hartman is the second person recently able to evade the security and stowaway in a plane from the San Francisco airport. A 15-year-old Somali migrant, Yahya Abdi, jumped a fence at San Jose's airport and hid in the wheel well of a Hawaiian Airlines flight. He survived the journey of over 5 hours over the Pacific. He got off the plane and wandered around on the tarmac at Maui airport about an hour after the plane landed before being noticed by the officials.
