A Russian court has sentenced to one year in prison a passenger who forced an emergency landing of a plane due to his drunken antics in the air, and then bit a police officer who tried to detain him, Russian media reported.
Sergei Borisov pleaded guilty to the March incident, which forced a passenger aircraft bound from Moscow to Goa to make an emergency landing in Astrakhan, ITAR-Tass reported Tuesday. He appealed to the court for a suspended sentence so he could "be more useful," TVC television reported.
"I'm asking to be allowed to live [because] those places where I'm being kept now cannot be called a life," he told the court.
The court appeared unimpressed, sentencing Borisov to one year in a penal colony, a type of minimum-security prison. Prosecutors had been asking for a six-month sentence, the Kommersant newspaper reported.
During the flight, a drunk Borisov, whom TVC identified as a 26-year-old computer programmer from Moscow at the time of the incident, hit his girlfriend who was traveling with him and then proceeded to knock aircraft chairs and accost passengers, state news agency RIA Novosti reported.
After the plane's emergency landing, Borisov shouted crude expletives at police who boarded the plane to escort him to a medical facility, kicked those who attempted to detain him, and bit one of the officers, news reports said.
He was charged with violence against police officials, ITAR-Tass reported.
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