Passenger death on plane probed

NEW YORK – Prosecutors are probing the death of a man who was subdued by airline passengers after he grew disruptive on a New York-bound flight, a spokesman said Sunday.

William Lee was pronounced dead Friday after he was removed from the American Airlines flight at Kennedy International Airport. The cause of death had not yet been determined.

Lee, 48, stood up on American’s Flight 4 from Los Angeles and “loudly demanded another beer,” an airline spokesman said. Attendants asked him to wait, but the man “got very, very belligerent and loud and disruptive and was told he would not be served any more alcohol.”

Seven male passengers eventually restrained Lee, who was a very large man, and they and the flight crew put flexible handcuffs on him and put him back in his seat. The spokesman said he’d heard reports the men were members of a rugby team.

After the landing, Port Authority police boarded the plane and administered CPR to Lee, who “was in some kind of distress,” the spokesman said.