CLEVELAND — Just-released body camera video offers new details in the case of a flight attendant suspected of stealing a backpack belonging to a popular Esports commentator last month.
D'Ron Maingrette, 33, known in the gamer community as "D1," was traveling home to California after a weekend in Northeast Ohio when he said someone stole his backpack as he used an A Concourse restroom inside Cleveland Hopkins International Airport on June 23. Maingrette said he left the bag on a wheelchair with an attendant, but when he returned, his backpack was gone.
"My wallet's in there and my passport," Maingrette told a Cleveland police officer.
The wheelchair attendant told police he only turned his back for "half a second" and the bag was gone.
"It's sad somebody just took his stuff like that," the wheelchair attendant is heard telling the officer.
On the video, you can hear the officer call another and ask if someone can review the airport's surveillance video. Within seconds, investigators spot what happened and the officer heads to gate A 14. The video shows him board a Frontier Airlines flight and tell a flight attendant to bring Maingrette's bag and exit the plane.
"We have to have another flight attendant," a woman tells the officer.
"I'm not concerned about that," replied the officer.
On the video, the flight attendant is heard explaining to the officer what he was doing with the bag.
"I saw an unattended bag and I was going to present it to the gate agent when we were done boarding because, like nobody was around," said the flight attendant.
"You were going to take an unattended bag that you didn't know what was in it, and you're going to take it onto a plane that's going somewhere with all those people on it?" the officer asked.
The flight attendant, who has not been criminally charged, tells the officer he did check the bag to make sure it was safe.
Maingrette checked and found everything was still inside the backpack. On the video he's seen hugging the officer.
Police allowed the flight attendant to fly back home to Florida.
Late Wednesday, a Frontier spokesperson said the flight attendant was fired.
A Cleveland Police spokesperson said because the case was a misdemeanor, "in order to press charges against the named suspect, the victim would have to go to the prosecutor."
RELATED: Flight attendant accused of stealing Esports commentator's bag at Hopkins Airport
