A woman is speaking out after a video of her heated altercation with another passenger on a JetBlue flight over an allegedly “stolen” phone charger has gone viral on social media.
In a video posted on TikTok on Tuesday, the woman, who goes by @Vanessa.Klover, identified herself as the “charger thief,” before she explained her side of the story, claiming the now-viral clip has been “taken out of context” and she has been receiving “death threats.”
Last week, a man, who goes by @RcRelated on TikTok and who the DailyMail identified as Eddie Orellano, shared a video of the incident on his profile. Over the clip — and in the caption of the video — he wrote, “Woman takes my Apple charger without asking and thought no one would notice.”
In the video, Orellano filmed a blonde woman, Vanessa, walking down the aisle of the plane with her luggage, before asking her if she took his phone charger.
“Yeah, I have it,” she said, before Orellano, who appeared to be getting upset, asked her — repeatedly — why she took it.
“Because nobody was on the flight, bro. Chill the f–k out,” she told them, adding that she was going to give him his charger back “in a second.”
As Vanessa continued to make her way to her seat, Orellano continued to get more angry, raising his voice at Vanessa.
“You can’t take things without asking!” he yelled, while a woman sitting next to him attempted to call him down. “Ed, I don’t want to get kicked off this plane! Sit down.”
Vanessa also waved for the camera, to which Orellano said that she was going to be “famous” on TikTok.
Meanwhile, another passenger told Orellano that he was “being ridiculous,” saying that Vanessa was “gonna give it back,” to which Orellano replied, “No, you’re being ridiculous! She stole something without asking!”
“You can’t take things without asking!” he added.
Now at her seat, Vanessa grabbed the charger out of her bag and handed it over to Orellano, before asking him somewhat mockingly, “Is it stealing if you give it back?”
“Yes, it’s stealing! You’re giving it back because I caught you! And everybody else saw you, that’s why!” he said. “Everybody else said you took it. What, you can’t afford a charger?”
Orellano went on to share a follow-up video, in which he detailed what he claims went down. He said the flight had been delayed three times, and he and his wife decided to get off the plane to get some food during one of the delays.
Orellano claimed another passenger came up to him while he was in the terminal and told him that a woman had “unplugged” his charger, which he said was at his seat, before she “rolled it up and put it in her bag.”
“Keep that in mind,” he said. “She unplugged it. I left it plugged in. So it was plugged in underneath the seat … she stopped people from deplaning. She stopped the flow of everybody exiting to bend down, unplug it, and put it in her bag.”
Orellano claimed that flight attendants gave him the “option” to “call the authorities” to have “this woman removed from the flight and arrested for stealing.” He said he chose against it because the flight would have been delayed.
Orellano also said that he wouldn’t have posted the video if Vanessa didn’t have an “attitude” and had been “apologetic” when he had confronted her.
After the video blew up on TikTok — it currently has over 14 million views — Vanessa took to social media to address the incident, and share her recollection of events, with the woman first explaining why she decided to respond.
“Hi, everyone, charger thief here,” she began in the nearly four-minute TikTok video. “I wasn’t going to make a video responding to this at all because it was over a year ago, and I didn’t want to give it more attention than it’s already gotten, but this has really been blown so out of proportion.
“I am getting bombarded with harassment, and flooded with death threats,” she continued.
Vanessa first gave “context,” saying that the charger “was found on the ground of an emptying flight where we were told to remove all possessions because we didn’t know if we were getting back on the same plane because there [were] technical issues.”
She said she was “coming from the back rows,” saw the charger, and “picked it up off the ground,” but “did not unplug it.” According to Vanessa, she then asked fellow passengers around her to see if the charger belonged to them.
“No stealthy behavior here,” she said, claiming that she brought the charger to a flight attendant. “I told the stewardess. She would not take it because they cannot be liable for passenger possessions.”
Vanessa said when they got back on the plane “several hours” later, Orellano was already recording, claiming he was “getting into people’s faces about this charger.”
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“When I got on, I immediately told him I would get him his charger, but just to give me a second,” she continued. “Several hours had passed… it was honestly the last thing on my mind. I did not even know where this charger was. What I was worried about was my 20-pound cat that had just thrown up at the gate.”
“I wanted to find a safe place to set my cat down and my luggage, and also get a little bit of distance from this very aggressive, erratic man, for my own safety,” Vanessa said, again claiming that she told the man she would give him his charger but to just give her “a minute.”
While she admitted after watching Orellano’s video that she could have acted more “gracefully,” Vanessa said she “was really stressed out” and “exhausted,” and was worried about her cat.
“[I was] clearly out of breath after eight hours at the airport only to be recorded and yelled at,” she continued. “I totally acted imperfectly, as most people do under duress.”
She also shut down Orellano’s claim that he was “given the choice to press charges,” accusing it of being a “bold-faced lie.”
“What the video neglects to show is him losing his mind well after I give him back the charger, sat in my seat in the back, and he continues yelling at everyone, and the crew threatening to remove him off the flight if he can’t control his rage.”
“I’m sure he’ll make another video clinging on to his five minutes of fame, refusing and denying everything that I’ve said here,” she said.
Vanessa said she doesn’t have plans to share another video, and stressed that she does “not condone stealing,” before again admitting that she “could have acted with a little bit more of patience and compassion.”
She concluded her video by noting that she doesn’t understand why a “misunderstanding over a phone charger warrants legitimate harassment and death threats.”
