A sex assault suspect who has been indicted with abusive sexual contact with a teenage girl on an Alaska Airlines flight from Anchorage to Seattle has been ordered to tell flight attendants of the charges against him if he boards a plane before his trial.
Trayton C. Ballot, 27, of Deering, Alaska, was arrested on January 15 after Alaska Airlines flight AS190 arrived in Seattle in the early hours of the morning following a three-hour red-eye flight from Alaska.
Ballot was sitting next to the 17-year-old female victim toward the back of the Boeing 737MAX, who was trapped in the window, according to a criminal affidavit filed in a Seattle courthouse last week.
During the flight, Ballot allegedly moved his hand onto the victim’s upper thigh and started rubbing her leg without her permission. The victim pushed Ballot’s hand away, but moments later, Ballot again started to rub the girl’s thigh.
In an attempt to thwart Ballot’s unwanted attention, the victim placed a pillow on her lap and lowered her tray table to keep it securely in place, but it wasn’t long before Ballot once again tried to touch the victim by raising his armrest and sliding his hand onto her thigh.
At this point, the victim summoned up the courage to write a message on her phone, which she showed to her mother, who was sitting in the row behind her. The victim then managed to get away from Ballot and alerted a flight attendant, who found an alternative seat for her to sit in for the rest of the flight.
Ballot was immediately arrested upon arrival on the flight, and he was initially held at the Federal Detention Center at SeaTac Airport. The following day, however, Ballot was released on bail pending his trial, albeit with a slew of conditions attached to his release.
Among those conditions, the court ordered Ballot to surrender his passport and not attempt to travel to another country, but he is still allowed to travel on domestic flights.
In those cases, however, Ballot is under strict instructions to inform flight attendants of the charges he faces. That may allow flight attendants to closely monitor his behavior on a flight, although he also risks being denied travel.
Ballot has pleaded not guilty to the charge of abusive sexual contact, and his trial is expected to get underway on April 7.
This is terrible. However, once in awhile, an innocent passenger is falsely accused. One teenage girl falsely accused a man because she didn’t like the way the man and his girlfriend were hugging and bantering with each other. She came up with a story of the man ejaculating all over the place but several passengers said they didn’t see or smell anything. The teen’s story also kept changing.