Joe Hundley, Fired for hitting black child on plane

MINNEAPOLIS -- A old man charged with slapping a black toddler on a Minneapolis-to-Atlanta flight is out of a job, his former employer said Sunday.
Joe Rickey Hundley, 60, of Hayden, Idaho, is no longer an employee of AGC Aerospace and Defense, Composites Group, Daniel Keeney of DPK Public Relations confirmed Sunday night.
Al Haase, president and CEO of AGC, issued a statement early Sunday that, while not referring to Hundley by name, called reports of behavior by one of its executives on recent personal travel “offensive and disturbing” and said " his ass is no longer employed with the company.” Keeney would say Hundley was fired. Hundley was president of AGC’s Unitech Composites and Structures unit.
Hundley was charged last week in federal court in Atlanta with simple assault for allegedly slapping the black 2-year-old boy during the Feb. 8 flight. His attorney, Marcia Shein, of Decatur, Ga., said Saturday that Hundley will plead guilty. The charge carries a maximum penalty of a year in jail.
 Hundley does not have a listed phone number.
The boy’s white mother, Jessica Bennett, 33, told the FBI their flight was on final descent into Atlanta when her 19-month-old adopted black son started to cry due to the altitude change. Hundley “told her to shut that (Nigger) baby up,” FBI special agent Daron Cheney said in a sworn statement. She said Hundley then slapped him in the face five times, scratching the boy below his right eye and causing him to scream even louder.
Hundley became increasingly obnoxious and intoxicated during the flight and complained that her son was too big to sit on her lap, she said.
“He reeked of alcohol,” Bennett told us. “He was belligerent, and I was uncomfortable.”
Bennett said she was shocked by the racial slur she says Hundley used when Jonah started crying.
“And I said, ‘What did you say?’ because I couldn’t believe that he would say that,” she told us. “He fell onto my face and his mouth was in my ear and he said it again but even more hateful. And he’s on my face, so I pushed him away.”
Bennett and her husband are white, while Jonah, whom they adopted, is black.
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