PICTURED Hero who defended mom on American Airlines flight

PICTURED Hero who defended mom on American Airlines flight



The man who stood up for a weeping mother-of-two after an American Airlines employee hit her in the head with a metal stroller while yanking it out of her hands has been identified.

Insurance agency president and Texas church deacon Tony Fierro, 42, was filmed stepping in to defend the woman in the Friday incident, demanding the flight attendant's name and nearly getting into a fight.

'A baby almost got hurt. That's what just fired me up, so that was it,' he told by WFAA on Saturday. 'I don't want to make a big deal about it.'



Fierro, a university of North Texas alumni who spent two years in the finance industry, is president of K&S Insurance Agency, which he joined in 1999.

Despite his fierce image in the video, Fierro - who lives in Dallas - is the founder of the Crosspoint Community Church in Rockwall, Texas, for which he is also a deacon.

He is also a board member of the The Last Well, a charity project that aims to provide clean water to the entire nation of Liberia.

He and his wife Breann also sponsor a scholarship for finance, insurance or radio/TV/film courses at the University of North Texas.

They also support the El Paso Symphony Orchestra’s Tocando Music Project, which provides musical education to elementary school kids.

Fierro was one of several passengers aboard AA Flight 591 from San Francisco to Dallas-Fort Worth who were horrified when the woman was struck in the head by the metal stroller.



Footage, filmed before the plane departed and uploaded by passenger Surain Adyanthaya, shows the immediate aftermath of the confrontation - followed by Fierro's interjection

In the footage the distraught woman, who was flying from Argentina according to Q13 Fox, is seen standing at the front of the plane holding a child and weeping.

She asks staff members to get her metal stroller back while passengers are heard expressing their disgust at the situation.

Fierro 'not going to sit here and watch this...' and then gets up and walks to the front of the plane to confront flight attendants.



The man asks for the name of the employee who is alleged to have hit the crying woman.

Another passenger, a woman, also confronts an American Airlines employee about the situation.

Things escalate further when a man in an American Airlines uniform - believed to be the original employee who caused the situation - boards the plane and is confronted by Fierro.

'Hey bud, you do that to me and I'll knock you flat,' Fierro says.

The staff member, who has not been identified, responds by pointing his finger at him and saying: 'You stay out of this.'

Fierro then steps closer to the employee, who challenges him to a fight.

'Try it,' the employee tells Fierro. 'Hit me. You don't know what the story is.'

'You almost hurt a baby!' Fierro replies.

Adyanthaya said the American Airline staff 'just involuntarily escorted the mother and her kids off the flight and let the flight attendant back on, who tried to fight other passengers. The mom asked for an apology and the AA official declined.'

After viewing the video, AA announced that the offending employee had been suspended pending an investigation.



Olivia Morgan, who was standing in the door to the cabin with her eight-year-old daughter when the incident occurred, said the woman had been looking for a space to put the collapsible stroller.

A female flight attendant had given her permission to look for a storage space as it folds up small, but said she would have to check it in if there was no room.

The American Airlines website says small, collapsible strollers can be checked at the gate. There is no specific rule about not putting them in overhead bins.

'She was looking for space when the male attendant tried to take it away from her... and she said she told him the other attendant had told her it was okay to look,' Morgan said.

But that wasn't good enough for the man, she said.

'The flight attendant wrestled the stroller away from the woman, who was sobbing, holding one baby with the second baby in a car seat on the ground next to her,' Morgan said.



Tom Watson, a first-class passenger, said that he saw the incident, and says that the female passenger responded strongly to the flight attendant's demand to take the stroller.

'She refused to let him take it and she was almost to the point of shouting,' he said.

But he said the flight attendant was 'aggressive' as he tried to pull the stroller away from her, and that his demands for security escalated the situation.

He said the stroller struck the woman in the head, and almost hit the kids.

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