OAKLAND — An incident on a Southwest Airlines flight where a man became combative and stripped naked left some passengers too shaken to fly.

The flight, bound for St. Louis with a stop in Las Vegas, had to return to Oakland International Airport on Thursday morning after a man exposed himself to a woman seated next to him, according to police. The man reportedly then began yelling, hit the woman and a couple of other passengers and eventually took off all his clothes. When the plane returned to the terminal in Oakland, several Alameda County Sheriff’s deputies arrested him, and he was taken to a hospital.

Passenger Jim Scanlon, 52, of San Ramon, who was on a business trip, saw the disturbance unfold. “About 20 minutes into the flight, I heard a ruckus about four rows behind me.

This big guy, about 6-1 and a good 300 pounds, wearing an Oakland A’s baseball cap, probably in his mid-20s, had hit a lady in the mouth,” Scanlon said. “He was yelling but not making any sense. Then he hit or slapped another woman who was sitting next to her husband, and he hit him on the top of the head.

“A flight attendant came running up the aisle, but he faked a swing at her, and she ran back to the back of the plane,” he said. “Another two crew members came toward him. He was totally out of his gourd.”

Surrounding passengers tried to calm the man, and he did sit down for a while, Scanlon said. “Then he stands up again and he’s totally
naked,” he said. “Then he sat down again and threw up.”

At that point, the plane began a banking turn to return to Oakland, where police used two sets of handcuffs to take him into custody, Scanlon said.