Agent Groper has been relieved of his TSA duties, after the 40-year-old man was charged yesterday for unlawfully detaining a young Korean student so he could sexually molest her.
The perverted pat-down occurred earlier this week at LaGuardia Airport when Max Oquendo spied a 21-year-old exchange student he wanted to fondle and forced her to accompany him to a men’s bathroom for that purpose.
The passenger had already cleared terminal checkpoints and even protested the dubious search, asking for a female Transportation Security Administration officer to perform it instead.
Oquendo, however, continued his sick ruse and, once done with sexually assaulting the student, pretended he was speaking with a superior on his cell phone.
“She’s clear,” he said, to no one. “She doesn’t have any weapons or knives.”
Shortly after the abusive incident, the violated woman filed a complaint and then picked Agent Groper out of a photo lineup.
Max Oquendo was subsequently arrested and terminated from his position at the TSA, which he’d held for over 13 years. He now faces a number of criminal counts for the sexual assault, including false imprisonment.
“The defendant is accused of an egregious abuse of his position as a government screener at LaGuardia Airport to sexually victimize a young woman,” said the Queens District Attorney on Friday. “Such alleged conduct cannot, under any circumstances, go unpunished.”
Unfortunately, though, such abuses by airport screeners are far more common than the agency would have travelers believe, calling into question whether the TSA is actually enforcing “public safety” or posing a threat to it.
Eponymous Rox
