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Passenger Arrested After Making Threats On Flight To Sacramento

SACRAMENTO (CBS13) -- A woman is in jail after threatening to kill fellow passengers on a Southwest flight from Portland to Sacramento. The chaotic scene was captured on video that a fellow passenger sent to CBS13.

The incident began after a woman attempted to smoke in the airplane bathroom and alter the smoke detector, according to airline officials.

The man who shot the video said the woman was ordered back to her seat but began yelling irrationally, threatening to kill everyone on board, and demanding that the plane land.

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Valerie Curbelo (CBS13)

He says she pushed a flight attendant and had to be physically restrained by passengers and crew for the remaining 30 minutes of the flight.

Law enforcement officers were waiting at the gate and arrested 24-year-old Valerie Curbelo on the spot.

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CBS13's Marc Thompson went to the Sacramento County Jail to get Curbelo's side of the story.

Why did you try and smoke in the bathroom?" Thompson asked.

"The anxiety, yeah the anxiety," Curbelo said.

But Cabello couldn't say what she was anxious about, or why she acted the way she did.

"You were saying some pretty threatening things like you were going to kill everybody on the plane, why did you say that?" Thompson asked.

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"I don't know," Curbelo replied. "It was not me. It was not me."

Cabello is from Sandy, Oregon just outside of Portland. She wouldn't discuss why she was flying to Sacramento.

She was booked into the Sacramento County Jail on the charge of making criminal threats.

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