Screener arrested at the airport.
By Raif Karerat
A TSA screener has been accused of sexually assaulting a woman at LaGuardia Airport in New York after telling her she needed to be searched in the bathroom.
The Port Authority Police Department and the Queen’s District Attorney’s Office identified the TSA screener as Maxie Oquendo, 40, of Manhattan. He was arrested Thursday night at the airport, according to local news outlets.
Prosecutors say the victim, a 21-year-old Korean college student was in Terminal B at around 8 p.m. Tuesday when she was told by Oquendo to go into the bathroom for a secondary search, at which point the agent allegedly molested her, various local media sources reported.
He allegedly touched her breasts and put his hand down her shorts before letting her leave the bathroom.
Queens District Attorney Richard Brown on Friday announced Oquendo’s arrest on charges of second-degree unlawful imprisonment, official misconduct, third-degree sexual abuse and second-degree harassment in an official statement.
“The defendant is accused of an egregious abuse of his position as a government screener at LaGuardia Airport to sexually victimize a young woman,” Brown said. “Such alleged conduct cannot, under any circumstances, go unpunished.”
According to the WABC, TSA screeners do not have the authority to conduct a secondary patdown outside of a checkpoint area and that opposite-gender screening requiring a pat-down can only be done when there are no female officers present and a witness is present during such pat-downs, which must be conducted in a designated private screening area in a TSA checkpoint.