HOUSTON – It was the push first seen on Channel 2 News.
In June, Channel 2 Investigates first showed you the jaw-dropping video involving 71-year-old Ronald Tigner, a Houston grandfather and United Airlines frequent flyer.
We were the first to report that Tigner had filed a lawsuit against United claiming he was pushed to the ground at Bush Intercontinental Airport by a United Airlines customer services representative.
“This is just one of the most inhumane things I’ve ever seen in my life,” says Tigner’s attorney, Will Hoke.
Even more shocking than the incident is that not one United employee at the scene bent down to help this man or see if he was OK after he hit the ground.
Now, the man at the center of that chaotic scene at the airport, 46-year-old Alejandro Anastasia -- the man accused of pushing Tigner to the ground -- is talking exclusively to Channel 2 Investigates.
And he’s flipping the script.
He is now suing Ronald Tigner for more than $1 million for assault and negligence.
“To think that all of a sudden, out of the blue, he’s (Anastasia) just going to go push some customer down to the ground, it’s an absurd position,” says Jimmy Ardoin, Anastasia’s attorney.
“I’m not going around pushing elderly people,” says Anastasia.
Alejandro Anastasia says the confrontation at Bush Intercontinental really began with Ronald Tigner.
According to Anastasia’s lawsuit, he says Tigner began shouting profanities and racial slurs at him and other United employees when Tigner was unable to get through security because of a poorly printed boarding pass.
“He says, ‘You need to hire people who speak English back there,’" Anastasia says.
At that point, Anastasia says a co-worker walked up and took Tigner’s boarding pass and left to go get him a new, freshly printed one.
That’s when Anastasia says things turned ugly.
“When I turn around, he (Tigner) steps on my toe and he gets in my face, you know, like an inch from my face and tells me ‘wipe that ------- smirk off your face.’
Now, he’s smaller than me and I’m bigger and supposedly, you know, he’s an elderly man… and I just back away, you know, backed away,” Anastasia says, as he thrusts his arms out in front of him to show how he tried to back Tigner off of him.
“That’s when I think he lost his balance and that’s when he fell,” Anastasia says.
Anastasia says he wasn’t trying to push the man down, he was just trying to get the guy away from him, because he says he thought Tigner was going to head-butt him.
“Honestly, I got scared.
I got scared and that’s what made me react,” Anastasia says.
When asked why he didn’t immediately bend down to help Tigner, Anastasia says, “I didn’t want to get near him, just because somebody might think I want to continue hitting him.”
Later, Anastasia was charged with the felony crime of injury to an elderly individual.
But the case was dismissed after Anastasia agreed to write a letter of apology, take an anger management class and pay restitution.
Anastasia, who is the father of two children, was later fired from United Airlines.
Now, Anastasia is not only suing Tigner, he is also suing United Airlines for over $1 million for, among other things, negligence and damages.
In that lawsuit, he says United failed to “adequately train Anastasia and other employees to deal with unruly and abusive customers such as Tigner.”
As for Ronald Tigner, he is suing Anastasia and United Airlines for negligence.
As Hoke, Tigner’s lawyer, puts it, “They (United employees) left him (Tigner) lying there as cold as a wedge and did absolutely nothing.”
We at Channel 2 Investigates reached out to United Airlines for comment and a company spokesman sent us this statement: “As this is an ongoing legal matter, we are unable to discuss beyond what we’ve previously shared.”
As for Ronald Tigner, his attorney says Alejandro Anastasia’s claims are completely false and the investigating officer, eyewitnesses to the event and airport surveillance video prove those claims are false.
