DEATH FLIGHT

THE COMPLETE STORY is yet to be assembled. But accounts from some passengers provide the best details yet about how Jonathan Burton behaved, how those aboard the flight responded, and the deadly consequences. By Pauline Arrillaga

Somewhere behind the stone facade of the FBI building in Salt Lake City, a cockpit voice recorder and a thick sheaf of interview notes hold clues to why a 19-year-old was killed by fellow airline passengers.

So far, Jonathan Burton's mother does not know what happened to her son aboard Southwest Airlines Flight 1763 from Las Vegas. He went berserk and was pummeled, wrestled into the aisle and held down so tightly that he couldn't breathe.

So far, the more Janet Burton has learned, the more she has questioned.

Little about Burton's last hour alive is sure. What follows is the best reconstruction possible to date, pieced together from interviews with passengers, police, the FBI, airline officials, Burton's mother and sections of the autopsy report she gave to reporters.

Airport police also supplied written statements from two officers who met the flight at Salt Lake City International just after 11 p.m. on Aug. 11.

Accounts differ, each influenced by vantage point, tainted by media reports or confused by panic.

`See you in two weeks'

Jonathan Burton was headed to Salt Lake to spend two weeks with his aunt and uncle. It was a trip he and his older brothers had made almost every summer since they were kids. During the week, they'd work at their uncle's painting business. Water skiing and hiking ruled the weekends. This year, Burton was traveling alone.

He was preparing to start community college after taking a year off, in which he had worked in housekeeping for a nursing home. He was once voted employee of the month.

The evening he was leaving, the TV news carried something about a plane crash. Janet Burton remembers saying it seemed like anytime someone's about to get on a plane, they hear about something going wrong.

"Yeah," her son said, "isn't that something?"

They headed for the airport and grabbed some tacos on the way. Mrs. Burton waited with her son at the gate until he boarded.

"I love you," he said.

"See you in two weeks," she replied.

`I wonder what we're in for'

Adam Bradshaw jogged to the gate. He was headed for a new job and didn't want to miss the flight. He found a spot toward the back.

John Whitaker took an aisle seat nearby.

Dave Jennings, on his way home from business in Los Angeles, found a seat two rows in front of Burton and tucked his laptop between his feet.

Dean Harvey, on vacation from Canada, settled in near the front.

At 9:20 p.m., the Boeing 737 lifted off over the sparkling lights of Las Vegas. It was behind schedule, but the captain told the 121 passengers they would be in Salt Lake on time.

The jet reached cruising altitude, and the three flight attendants began serving drinks. That's when Bradshaw first noticed Burton, in jeans and a T-shirt, wearing a baseball cap backward. He had brown hair, a goatee--and a frantic look.

As a flight attendant was about to serve Bradshaw, Burton strolled up, took a drink off the tray and returned to his seat without a word. "Away he went," Bradshaw said, "kind of self-serve."

The attendant told Burton he should have waited for someone to take his order, but he didn't seem to pay attention.

He was on his feet again a few minutes later, this time headed to the rear. He rummaged through galley cabinets until he found peanuts, and returned to his seat. Jennings recalls thinking the guy must work for Southwest.

Another passenger thought otherwise.

"Fifty-one-50," the man behind Bradshaw muttered. A television news director, Bradshaw recognized the police catch phrase for somebody mentally unstable. Bradshaw turned to his fellow passenger and said, "I wonder what we're in for."

He kicks the cockpit door

Several minutes passed. Burton suddenly began pacing the aisle. He walked to the front, to the back, and then again toward the nose of the plane.

Whitaker thought he was looking for an open lavatory, but he also saw the glassy, agitated look on Burton's face. He must really have to go, Whitaker thought.

"When he walked past me, he was mumbling and he seemed anxious," Whitaker said. "He seemed stressed."

Burton then raised his voice and kicked the folding door to the cockpit, hard. An emergency escape panel in the door popped out, and Burton shoved his head and shoulders through the opening, muttering something like, "Fly this plane."

People started to get scared.

Six-feet-tall and about 190 pounds, Burton was muscular and ruggedly good-looking, bearing a slight resemblance in some family photographs to actor Brad Pitt. He had wrestled in high school. It showed.

It "looked like he was intent on going in there," said Harvey, the Canadian passenger. "But it looked like the pilots were intent on pushing him out."

And they did.

What the heck is he going to do, Harvey wondered. Is he going to pull out a weapon? Is he going to hijack the plane?

`Settle down, chill out'

A flight attendant urged Burton to calm down. It's unclear whether he then returned to a seat on his own or if passengers forced him. A group of men surrounded him in an exit row.

Somebody yelled he was going for the handle to the emergency exit. Men and women scrambled over seats to get away. Children started screaming. A flight attendant asked volunteers to stand in front of the broken cockpit door.

A few men hung on to Burton as he squirmed, then he seemed to get hold of himself and sat down. The curious peeked up over seat backs to get a better look.

"Settle down, settle down, chill out," people told him.

"Stupid jerk," someone added.

Burton still had a spacey look on his face, and each time one of his self-appointed guards glanced away, Burton wriggled a little more.

It wasn't over.

A second outburst

As the plane began its descent into Salt Lake, Burton exploded again. He may have been antagonized by a flight attendant.

According to passengers' accounts in the airport police report and passenger Anne Crawford, 41, of Barstow, Calif., a flight attendant then loudly announced that another passenger, described as an off-duty police officer, would take care of the situation.

"She was standing next to me when she was making the announcement, and I was just cringing in my seat because they had pretty much calmed him down," said Crawford, seated two rows behind Burton.

Burton punched the officer in the face, Crawford said. "(Burton) was calm, he seemed like he was going to relax, but then he went into this fit again."

He jumped up, spit on people and landed punches like he knew how. Kids shrieked, old women hid their eyes.

Several men fought with Burton. One wound up with a split lip. They grabbed his arms and legs, stretched him out and mashed him on the floor. Four of them stood or sat on his limbs.

At some point the pilot came on the intercom, telling passengers they were close to landing. He said he hoped all of them--but one--would have a good weekend. It's unclear whether this came before or after Burton's second outburst.

`I think they're killing him'

Jennings couldn't see well but remembers glimpsing Burton on the floor, sort of under a seat. He says some passengers were yelling things like, "Hurt him! Beat him up!"

"They were scared. It felt like he was taking over the plane," Jennings said.

Only Jennings has publicly reported hearing shouts egging on a fight. And only Harvey has given what may be the most disturbing part of the story. He says that in the end, it wasn't Burton doing the fighting.

Harvey remembers the young man subdued as some passengers continued to beat him.

"I couldn't understand why this was continuing," Harvey said. "He was basically 100 percent defenseless at this time. ... I remember thinking no one can take a pounding like this."

Harvey says he went down the aisle as a big man in black boots--weighing perhaps 260 pounds--repeatedly kicked Burton.

"I felt this group, particularly this one man, was out of control," Harvey said. "He was stomping on Jonathan's chest, one foot at a time, I don't know what the rest of the group was doing other than holding him."

Harvey begged for it to stop, but finally returned to his seat and told his companion, "I think they're killing him back there."

Police handcuffed the body

One of the first police officers to board the plane reported finding Burton unconscious and bleeding from the mouth with a "huge knot" and "discoloration" on his forehead.

Police handcuffed the motionless body as people warned Burton would fight if he came around. Paramedics tended to bloody passengers and to Burton, but he was declared dead just after midnight at a local hospital.

Airport police took passenger names, and some filled out written forms for Southwest. Others left without talking to authorities. Members of the flight crew went to a hotel and had to be brought back to the airport that night for questioning by the FBI. The airline has declined to make their names public.

Linda Rutherford, of Southwest, said the company cooperated fully with authorities and believes crew members handled the situation as well as possible.

"The flight crew did absolutely what they thought was necessary in response to Mr. Burton's behavior," she said.

What the autopsy showed

FBI agent Bill Matthews first thought Burton had gone into cardiac arrest. His behavior seemed consistent with drug use, and his heart could have stopped if he was doped enough to act crazy.

It would be weeks before Janet Burton learned her son had suffocated as the other travelers restrained him.

Autopsy results, some of which were released by Burton's family, showed signs of drug use, but authorities don't think it was enough to cause his actions.

The autopsy also recorded that Burton had contusions and abrasions on his torso, face and neck.

The death has been ruled a homicide, but U.S. Attorney Paul Warner isn't filing charges, saying passengers acted in self-defense. He declined to be interviewed.

`I would have been scared'

Janet Burton says she can't understand any of it.

"That wasn't Jonathan. It's just nothing like Jonathan. He would never go looking for a fight."

Now, she's just hoping someone else will come forward with information.

"I can appreciate the fact of passengers being scared," she said. "If I'd been a passenger, I would have been scared.

"But Jonathan needed to be safely restrained. He should have been in a Salt Lake City jail if he caused a problem on that plane. They had no right to be judge, jury and executioner."