New York realtor plays the victim after he was filmed having huge meltdown at airport immigration desk
Emmanuel Hernández costly meltdown came while he was waiting to have his passport stamped by border agents at Rafael Núñez International Airport in Cartagena last Thursday.
The 42-year-old Tampa, Florida resident was filmed cursing at everyone around him and punching a cubicle's plexiglass window when agents arrived and tried to calm him down.
The hulking realtor did not relent and lifted a computer screen and slammed it to the ground before he was subdued and placed under arrest.
Hernández, a New York native, told Colombian online news outlet Impacto News that he traveled to Cartagena to celebrate his father's birthday and blamed his outburst on not feeling well.
'I was coming from a long trip from Orlando. The trip was postponed for two days, and I had to stay in a hotel. I was in Panama for two hours,' he said.
'When I arrived in Cartagena, there was a very long line, I felt sick, and I was very hot.'
Hernández explained that he decided to remove his shirt while he waited at the cramped passport control area to make himself feel better.
A Colombia Migration agent and other workers began to film him before he lost his cool.
'I told them to please stop, I told them it was part of my privacy, not to record me,' Hernández recalled. 'They started taking out cell phones and recording me,' he said. 'Instead of asking how I was, they recorded me.'
At one point Hernández could be heard shouting, 'F*** you. You think you can f*** around with the wrong motherf*****.'
After punching the counter's window, he screamed, 'Now f*** everybody.'
Hernández is staying with his parents and is now waiting for an airline that will allow him to board their aircraft for his return to the United States.
However, not have agreed to do so.
'I am deeply sorry and I apologize to all the authorities,' he said.
'What someone else does against you shouldn't disturb your peace of mind. That was my mistake.'
Emmanuel Hernández, pictured with his mother, has been ordered to be removed from Colombia following last week's incident in which he destroyed a counter in the passport control area at Rafael Núñez International Airport in Cartagena
What pains him the most is that he will have to wait 10 years before he can reunite with his parents in Colombia, where he spent part of his youth.
'My entire family lives here,' Hernández said. 'In the United States, I basically have no one. It hurts me not to see my parents in Colombia again for ten years.'
Hernández vowed to cover the cost of the damages the he caused.
'US citizen Emmanuel Andres Hernandez assaulted officers of this entity and caused material damage to an immigration control module, which disrupted the normal operation of the service," Colombia Migration said in a statement.
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