16 hours blab-a-thon...

**Monseratto** · May 19th, 2011 04:45 PM

If you were on a long haul flight and had to sit next to "passenger from hell"...

Oregon woman booted off train after allegedly talking 16 hours on cell phone

Listening to a stranger’s cell phone conversation – while you’re stuck on a bus, or trying to work out at the gym – has to rank among life’s most annoying things.

So when a Tigard, Ore. woman was booted off a train – after allegedly talking on a cell phone for 16 hours and threatening passengers who complained – it of course became national news.

MSNBC called the woman, Lakeysha Beard, a “blabbermouth.” Gawker had a story headlined “Hero cops escort cellphone loudmouth off train.” Ouch.

The story broke Sunday, when KATU reported that passengers on an Amtrak train said Beard had talked loudly and non-stop on her phone for 16 hours, from the time she boarded it at 10 p.m. Saturday in Oakland to her arrest at 2 p.m Sunday in Salem.

When passengers complained, police said she refused to hang up and got “aggressive,” the station reported. That prompted officers to stop the train and arrest her.

Beard was charged with disorderly conduct. The train, the Seattle-to-Los Angeles Coast Starlight, continued to Portland without her.

After her arrest, Beard told KATU she felt “disrespected” and said she didn’t understand why she had to be escorted away.

But how did Beard’s cell phone last as long as her alleged blab-a-thon, you wonder? MSNBC reported that she used Amtrak’s “handy cellphone charging stations.”

A few days after Beard’s arrest, NPR featured an excerpt of a book that explains the science behind really irritating things, like buzzing mosquitoes and whiny children. The book has a whole section devoted to – you guessed it – stranger’s cell phone conversations.

http://blog.seattlepi.com/thebigblog...on-cell-phone/