Richard O’Lenick had been attending a gun expo in Reno, Nevada, before boarding a flight back to New Jersey. The 53-year-old, who owns Gun for Hire, a shooting range and firearms shop in Woodland Park, wasn’t traveling alone. His employee, Juan Mejia, a retired police officer, was traveling with him on American Airlines Flight 618 out of Dallas, the last stretch of the trip home to Newark. By his own account, it started out as an unremarkable flight.
That changed when a passenger a few rows away began talking about the plane going down, according to O’Lenick, who described what happened next to The Daily Voice in an account later reported by the New York Post. “I don’t love to fly, and he just looks at me and goes, ‘We’re all going to die. This plane is going to crash,'” O’Lenick recalled.
He brushed it off with a reply that turned out to be more accurate than he probably intended. “And I said, ‘You’re going to meet a couple of new friends when we land.'”
The two men didn’t hesitate when the situation turned physical
The man sitting near O’Lenick was later identified as Arthur Layne Lundeen, a 67-year-old Arizona real estate agent whose in-flight outburst forced fellow passengers into action once it turned physical. Lundeen allegedly started directing racist and homophobic slurs at a Black flight attendant before the situation escalated further, with the man accused of attacking other people on board.
O’Lenick and Mejia moved to hold Lundeen down as flight attendants went to grab tape and zip ties. Neither man treated it as a decision they had to make in the moment. “I knew we were going to be doing this together, it wasn’t a thought,” O’Lenick said.
He pointed to the working relationship the two already had back at the range as the reason things came together as fast as they did. “I’ve got his back and he’s got mine,” he added. “It went the way it did because we have a good relationship and we understood each other and neither of us were going to let the other down.”
Lundeen kept fighting through the restraint, at one point biting Mejia, as the struggle continued and his head eventually ended up taped down along with the rest of him “It was a pretty volatile situation for a while,” O’Lenick said. “Safety was definitely a concern, and not knowing where it was going and what the intent was.” O’Lenick said Lundeen even tried to scare him when their eyes met after the men had restrained him.
News of the restraint spread once the story made the rounds online, and readers had plenty to say about it in the comments. “He should get a year in jail, fined $100K and be banned from flying. This should become a mandatory federal penalty,” one commenter argued.
Another pushed back on the idea that nothing happens to passengers like this. “Fines typically exceed $10k, lawyer fees, court costs and sometimes a federal prison sentence, along with the misfit often losing his/her job and being humiliated in the media. I hope this guy thought his behavior was worth it.”
A third reader summed up the frustration a lot of flyers seem to share these days. “Flying these days is already a pain in the A. The last thing anyone wants to experience is an unruly passenger who causes flight delays and disruptions. Good job guys.”
Once the plane landed, Maryland Transportation Police took Lundeen into custody. He was charged with second-degree assault and disorderly conduct, court records show. The fallout followed him off the plane too. His employer later learned what had happened mid-flight and moved to cut ties with him days later.
For O’Lenick, the incident came down to two coworkers who trusted each other stepping in when a flight home suddenly turned volatile.
Published: Sep 8, 2026 07:22 am