Estimated read time: Less than a minute
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
SALT LAKE CITY -- A judge has dropped federal charges against a man accused of inappropriately touching a teen during a flight from Atlanta to Salt Lake City.
Prosecutors said Aboubacar Soumah, 39, of Oakland, Calif., changed seats on the April 6 Delta Air Lines flight to sit next to a 14-year-old girl. The teen told investigators he asked her "weird" questions, such as whether she was flying alone and how old she was. She said he repeatedly touched her inappropriately even as she told him to stop.
But prosecutors last week filed a motion to dismiss the case because they didn't believe it was likely Soumah would be convicted.
Soumah's attorney had argued there was no physical evidence or witnesses to support the charges, the girl did not alert flight attendants following the flight, and offered differing accounts of what happened.
