Porsha Williams’ fellow passengers came to her defense after she was involved in an incident with another customer on a flight home from BravoCon in Las Vegas on Sunday, November 16.
The Atlanta Police Department on Wednesday, November 19, released bodycam footage of Williams, 44, being interviewed by a police officer after landing at the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport.
In the footage, the Real Housewives of Atlanta star gave the officer her version of events of what happened. Williams claimed that a woman seated next to her in first class confronted her about the volume on her phone being too loud and proceeded to call her a “bitch.” She said that the woman’s phone fell to the floor of the plane, while the other woman is accusing Williams of hitting the phone out of her hand. According to Williams, the woman claimed that “she’s going to press charges saying that I hit her.”
Williams was interrupted by two fellow passengers in the footage, both of whom denied to the police officer that they witnessed any physical altercation.
“Are you OK?” one woman asked the reality television star. “I was there. … The woman got in your face and gave you the middle finger. I’m so sorry. I’m embarrassed. That’s why I’m asking if you’re OK. I would not be OK.”
A male passenger then joined the conversation, telling the officer, “I was sitting two rows back. She did not touch that lady.”
“There was no physical altercation,” the man told the police officer. “There was verbal commentary that was at a normal level. And then, out of nowhere, it escalated in the sense of the lady to the right of [Williams] got really animated and started screaming.”
The man said that, per his recollection, “the only physical thing” Williams did was point at the other woman. “All [Williams] was saying was, ‘Don’t talk to me like that,’” he added.
Williams told the officer that she and her seatmate had a dispute over the volume of her phone while she watched Instagram videos before takeoff. “She told me, ‘Am I going to have to listen to that?’ and I said, ‘Do you want to?’ and she said, ‘No.’ I said, ‘Well, you know there was a nicer way you could have said that,’” Williams said in the video.
“And then she says, ‘What, bitch?’ She’s like, ‘Bitch, you don’t talk to me like that,’” Williams told the officer, alleging that the woman tried to record the conversation on her phone but dropped the device on the floor. Williams denied that she slapped the phone out of the woman’s hands.
Williams continued, “She’s like, ‘You hit me. Oh, my God, you hit me. You just hit me in my face.’”
According to Williams, the pair were separated and the other woman was moved to another seat.
In bodycam footage of an interview with the same officer, the other customer involved in the incident alleged Williams assaulted her after takeoff.
The woman claimed Williams was watching Instagram videos on “full blast” for 25 minutes before she objected. After a brief verbal altercation, the woman said, “The next thing I know, there was a fingernail so close to my eye that I thought I was going to be physically attacked.”
“She had her hands in my face, screaming, calling me crazy, on and on and on,” the other passenger continued.
According to the woman, she tried to film the incident on her phone to “protect myself,” but Williams slapped her device out of her hand.
“The flight attendant told me he saw her knock it out of my hand,” she claimed. “And that’s assault.”
The woman also told the officer she was afraid that Williams was “going to have me killed.”
The FBI told Us Weekly on Monday, November 17, that it was aware of an incident on a Delta Air Lines flight from Las Vegas to Atlanta on Sunday. “It is unknown at this time if federal charges will apply. That is all we have at the moment,” the bureau added.
Williams released a statement through her lawyer, Joe Habachy, addressing the incident on Tuesday, November 18.
“Ms. Williams was verbally assaulted by an irate and unhinged passenger without provocation. The passenger then proceeded to make false allegations that were in direct conflict with observations from several eyewitnesses,” Habachy said.
“As with any incident occurring aboard an aircraft, federal authorities are required to conduct an investigation involving all parties to determine what, if any, offenses occurred,” the statement continued. “Ms. Williams has every intention of cooperating with law enforcement to whatever extent necessary, and remains confident that the passenger will be charged.”
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