COLUMBUS, Ohio — A man who boasted on a talk radio show that he boarded an airplane with a knife concealed in his belt was arrested after his plane landed in Columbus.
Robert Hedrick, 37, of nearby Delaware, Ohio, was charged Wednesday with a third-degree felony of carrying a weapon aboard an aircraft, said Angie Neal, spokeswoman at Port Columbus International Airport.
Neal said Hedrick called a Columbus talk show and said he inadvertently boarded a US Airways flight in Greensboro, N.C., with a 3-inch knife hidden in his belt. A listener notified authorities, Neal said.
Hedrick's flight had a layover in Pittsburgh, but he did not have to pass through security there, Neal said.
Hedrick called the show — on Columbus radio station WTVN — from the Pittsburgh airport and again from the plane after it touched down in Columbus, said Greg Kurtz, a reporter at the station. Hedrick said he had forgotten he was wearing the belt when he boarded the plane, according to Kurtz.
The producer of the show, Joe Bradley, said Hedrick "had no intention of doing anything ill-mannered toward anyone."
"There was really nothing to it," Bradley told the Columbus Dispatch on Wednesday night. "If there's anything to it, it points out the farce that's being foisted upon us that's called airport security."
Police at Piedmont Triad International Airport in Greensboro declined to comment.
Officers at the Franklin County jail said Hedrick's paperwork had not been processed yet.
A woman who answered the phone at Hedrick's home Wednesday night identified herself as his wife and said she knew nothing of his arrest.
"Excuse me? Are you for real?" she told the Dispatch. "My husband called a radio station? That makes no sense."
She declined to say much more, but confirmed that he was on a flight Wednesday.