{"id":13099,"date":"2015-12-02T20:46:19","date_gmt":"2015-12-03T04:46:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/mom-on-trial-for-assaulting-tot-on-flight\/"},"modified":"2015-12-02T20:46:19","modified_gmt":"2015-12-03T04:46:19","slug":"mom-on-trial-for-assaulting-tot-on-flight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/mom-on-trial-for-assaulting-tot-on-flight\/","title":{"rendered":"Mom on trial for assaulting tot on flight"},"content":{"rendered":"

HONOLULU \u2014<\/strong> A mother on trial for allegedly assaulting her 15-month-old daughter during a flight from Alaska to Hawaii didn\u2019t do anything that went beyond \u201cproper parental discipline,\u201d her federal public defender told jurors Wednesday.<\/p>\n

To passengers and flight attendants on that May 3 flight, Samantha Leialoha Watanabe was unnecessarily rough to a generally well-behaved toddler, Assistant U.S. Attorney Marc Wallenstein told the jury in federal court in Honolulu.<\/p>\n

The trial is for the girl, whose name is Clementine, he said, \u201c15-month-old child who was pushed in the face with open hand with enough force to cause her head to jerk … back to its full range of motion.\u201d<\/p>\n

Clementine was also cursed at, smacked in the head, hit in the face with a stuffed doll and had tufts of hair yanked out, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll by this woman, Samantha Watanabe,\u201d he said, pointing at the defense table. \u201cThe defendant, her own mother.\u201d<\/p>\n

The allegations are fabricated by judgmental passengers who didn\u2019t like how Watanabe looked and dressed her child, said Alexander Silvert, Watanabe\u2019s defense attorney.<\/p>\n

Clementine was wearing a Playboy bunny pendant \u2014 considered a symbol of pornography to a passenger but simply a bunny to a child, Silvert said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey don\u2019t like the way she disciplined her child,\u201d he said, adding that at times during the long flight, Clementine couldn\u2019t be controlled.<\/p>\n

Watanabe cried during parts of Silvert\u2019s opening statement.<\/p>\n

Jurors will see evidence Clementine didn\u2019t have any bruises or marks on her body and that there was no bleeding, redness or other signs of hair that was pulled out, Silvert said.<\/p>\n

Alaska State Trooper Brian Miller, who was headed to a Kauai vacation with about a dozen family members, testified that Watanabe was rough with her daughter. \u201cShe was telling her to shut the F up and … what\u2019s your problem and so on,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Miller said Watanabe yanked a tuft of Clementine\u2019s hair and blew it to the ground. He was asked why, as a law enforcement officer, he didn\u2019t pick up any of the hair.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt that point I wasn\u2019t sure I was seeing … I wasn\u2019t really thinking along those lines about it being a criminal investigation at that point,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

HONOLULU \u2014 A mother on trial for allegedly assaulting her 15-month-old daughter during a flight from Alaska to Hawaii didn\u2019t do anything that went beyond \u201cproper parental discipline,\u201d her federal public defender told jurors Wednesday. To passengers and flight attendants on that May 3 flight, Samantha Leialoha Watanabe was unnecessarily rough to a generally well-behaved […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[230],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-13099","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-state-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13099","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13099"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13099\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13099"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13099"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13099"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=13099"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}