Keyonne Brooks said he had to request the surveillance footage before he discovered what happened to his carry-on bag.
What happens when carry-on luggage is accidentally left at the gate after a passenger boards a flight? Keyonne Brooks, who flew with Spirit Airlines from New Orleans to Los Angeles, is sharing the frustrating details after he watched a gate agent rifling through his bag and even throwing out some of his things.
Brooks said he realized he left his items behind as soon as he boarded the flight. “I told them as soon as I realized we were pulling away from the gate,” he tells Inside Edition.
He said he called Spirit Airlines as soon as he landed in Los Angeles. “I spoke to a Spirit Airlines manager and they told me, ‘Your bag is not in our possession. You haven’t left it here,’ and basically he hung up on me,” he says.
But Brooks said he was sure he left his bag at the counter, and that there would be surveillance footage proving it.
In order to obtain the footage, he ended up filing a public information request. “I was very detailed, down to the time I arrived and the clothes I had on,” Brooks says.
He says he was shocked when he was ultimately provided the footage – and even more shocked by what he saw on the video.
The footage shows another passenger pointing out the bag to a gate agent as some passengers were still boarding, but instead of asking around to see if anyone left behind a bag, the gate agent can be seen bringing the bag away to another gate.
Then, in a surprising twist of events, the surveillance footage shows the gate agent rummaging through the bag's contents before walking to a nearby trashcan, and dramatically throwing it away.
The gate agent even appears to read a medication label carefully, before opening the bottle and pouring out the pills.
Brooks said the pills were expensive, life-saving medications. “When she started pouring out my meds, that is the part that really got to me,” Brooks says. “Oh, you’re really trying to hurt me now.”
Another gate agent even appears to join her, and begin filming the dramatic as she doubles over in laughter as the rest of the bag is dumped out.
The first gate agent looks like she begins fishing a set of keys out of the trash, before dramatically throwing them back in.
“Look at the state of humanity. What are we doing to one another?” Brooks says.
Spirit Airlines told Brooks they are investigating the incident and that the gate agents involved were suspended, he says.
Spirit Airlines did not respond to Inside Edition’s request for comment.
