T.J. Homes got candid about how he was accused of theft recently on a plane for a woman’s cell phone.
“I was just recently accused of stealing somebody’s cell phone on a flight,” Holmes, 46, shared on the Tuesday, April 30, episode of his and Amy Robach‘s Amy and T.J.podcast.
“[It was] JetBlue but I can’t remember the flight number or I would tell you. The woman was sitting in 1F and I was in 5C.”
Holmes recalled about Robach, 51, also witnessing “watching a Black man go through” similar situations previously “being treated very differently.”
“I was using a bathroom at the front next to the cockpit. I come out and there’s a flight attendant and a little old lady,” he recalled. “She’s standing there and the flight attendant asks if I saw a phone in there. I turned around and said no.”
But Holmes’ denial didn’t seem to faze the woman, and she further accused him.
“The woman steps toward me and gestures like she is about to frisk me, ‘Oh, you don’t have it?’ In front of the plane she accused me of taking her phone,” he added.
“I actually crouched down, put my hands on my knees and got down on her level. I ask, ‘Ma’am are you telling me I took your phone?’ She kind of ignores me.”
Eventually the woman found her phone someplace else and realised her mistake. She did scream an apology “across the front rows” , but it was in vain to Holmes.
“Sorry doesn’t cut it at that point,” Robach said, to which Holmes added, “I have to be calm. If there weren’t more people around then I wouldn’t bend down and be as assertive as I was because I wouldn’t have a witness that I wasn’t aggressive.”