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Others jumped up to subdue him. Women screamed; children began to cry. Eight men eventually wrestled the 6-ft., 190-lb. Burton to the floor. "It is over," a man told him, yelling obscenities. "You are not getting up." But the mob may have got carried away. Dean Harvey, who was sitting in the third row with his wife and 11-month-old daughter, says a burly man jumped repeatedly onto Burton's chest. "You've got the guy subdued, what more do you want?" Harvey says he told the man, who jumped twice more before stopping. Harvey's account has not been confirmed by airline officials or other passengers.
When the plane landed, airport police and medics were waiting at the jetway. Burton was unconscious but still officially alive. He died later at the hospital. The autopsy found bruises and scratches from blunt-force trauma to his face, neck and torso. "He was essentially beaten from the top of his head down to his ankles," says Kent Spence, his mother's attorney. "He died of positional and compressional asphyxia." The autopsy found traces of marijuana and cocaine in his system, but not enough to explain his outburst, Spence says. Though the coroner ruled the death a homicide because Burton died at the hands of others, federal prosecutors say they cannot prove criminal intent. Yet many questions remain: What was wrong with Jonathan Burton? Was his killing a horrible accident or a case of vigilante malice? And what are the lessons for airlines dealing with the growing incidence of air rage? "The question to ask is whether the flight attendants attempted to restrict the Good Samaritans from using undue force," says California aviation lawyer Phillip Kolczynski. "Are we reaching the point where we need police officers on board, or do we need to start arming crew members with Mace or Taser guns?"
--With reporting by Peta Owens-Liston/Salt Lake City