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Odell Beckham Jr. is looking back on his viral moment from 2022 when he was escorted off a plane.
“I bought a first-class seat on a specific flight to get home and see my son,” Beckham, 32, told Haute Living magazine on Thursday, July 17, about the incident. “I was one of the first people to board. The flight gets delayed for an hour while we’re sitting there, so I just go to sleep, like anybody else would do, and then I’m woken up — an hour and 20 minutes later — thinking I’m waking up to us landing in California, to nine officers surrounding me.”
At the time, Beckham Jr. was on the New York Giants and was on a flight from Miami to Los Angeles to visit his son, Zydn, whom he shares with ex-girlfriend Lauren Wood.
“They said, ‘Basically, you have to get off this flight,’” Beckham recalled. “I was just trying to ask the question as to why I was being removed from a flight where I did absolutely nothing but fall asleep, nothing wrong. They said I was unconscious, refusing to put my seatbelt on which makes no sense. If I was unconscious, how would I refuse anything?”
Footage from the incident went viral, which showed the then-Giants wide receiver visibly upset as he spoke to the flight crew.
Bodcam footage shows the moments before Odell Beckham Jr was kicked off the airplane in Miami
Odell got angry with passengers after they kept looking at him & telling him to get off the flight pic.twitter.com/U9xNdWmJCL
— Shannonnn sharpes Burner (PARODY Account) (@shannonsharpeee) January 11, 2023
“That’s where you see me talking s— to this guy,” he said. “But people don’t know that part. They just see me yelling. They think I’m trying to be seen. But at the time, I was like, ‘F—, my day is literally about to be ruined. I’m not going to get to see my son. There are no more flights to get me back home to see him. But then, I’m the headline. Odell Beckham Jr. causes a scene. It doesn’t make sense.”
Officers at the scene said that when Beckham refused to leave the aircraft leaving flight crew to begin deplaning all of the occupants. Det. Argemis “AC” Colome told People at the time that the removal of Beckham Jr. was for concern over his health.
“The flight crew was concerned for a passenger [Mr. Odell Beckham], as they tried to wake him to fasten his seat belt, he appeared to be coming in and out of consciousness, prior to their departure,” Colome told the outlet at the time. “Fearing that Mr. Beckham was seriously ill, and that his condition would worsen through the expected 5 hour flight, the attendants called for police and fire rescue. Upon the officers' arrival, the flight crew asked Mr. Beckham several times to exit the aircraft, which he refused.”
After Beckham Jr. was deplaned he was later asked by officers to exit and he “did so without incident,” Colome said.
It's been almost three years since the November 2022 incident and Beckham expressed that while he dismisses some wrongdoing on his part, he explained that he let his “emotions get the best of me.”
“I was definitely hot,” he said.
Beckham Jr. was drafted from the Giants in 2014 and was later traded to the Cleveland Browns in 2019. In 2021, he played for both the Browns and the Los Angeles Rams. That same year, he won the Super Bowl LVI with the Rams. In 2023, he joined the Baltimore Ravens and the Miami Dolphins in 2024. He is currently a free agent.
