KAILUA-KONA — A Kailua-Kona woman pleaded guilty on Thursday to assaulting a flight attendant on a flight from Las Vegas to Honolulu.
Kristin Sharp, 34, was charged with assault by striking while aboard an airplane, a misdemeanor.
She was sentenced to three years of intensive supervision and 200 hours of community service.
The prosecuting office decided to charge her with assault rather than the harsher felony charges available to them because of the “totality of the circumstances,” said Larry L. Butrick, who prosecuted the case.
The criminal complaint says that on Sept. 24 Sharp was on an Allegiant Airlines flight from Las Vegas to Honolulu when she assaulted a flight attendant “by striking him in the back with a half-filled can of soda.”
The incident allegedly began with a confrontation over Sharp using an e-vapor system, which is barred by FAA rules.
“So I’m apologizing that it did happen, but it did not need to get carried to the level that it did. I think he had a bad day and was taking it out on me with a bad attitude,” Sharp told Hawaii News Now after her arrest in a September report in which some witnesses described Sharp, a Kona realtor, as intoxicated at the time of the incident.
Sharp denied those allegations in the same article.
She told the TV station she had intended to throw the soda can in a nearby garbage can and accidentally hit the flight attendant.
Reached by phone, Sharp declined to comment Thursday.