Exposing the exposer

In Portland's "daily""newspaper," every section is potentially the funnies. Here's their version of the story about the local guy who, drunk or high on God knows what-all, allegedly decided to whip out his junk and urinate in the aisle on an American Eagle flight from Chicago to Manchester, N.H. on Wednesday:

An Oregon man exposed himself and urinated in the aisle of a plane headed to Manchester, New Hampshire, causing the plane to divert to Buffalo, New York, officials said.

The 25-year-old Portland man was arrested and charged with indecent exposure after the flight landed at the Buffalo Niagara International Airport. He was released after making an initial appearance in federal court in Buffalo, according to a release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of New York.

The American Eagle flight departed from Buffalo shortly after the incident, according to an emailed statement from American Airlines. “We thank our team members for their professionalism and our customers for their understanding,” read the statement.

The man told officers he was flying from Portland to Manchester and had several whiskey and colas before boarding the flight and then more of them during a layover in Chicago and after boarding there. He said he got up to use the restroom and was coming back to his seat, but he has a medical urination problem, according to the criminal complaint.

An email seeking comment was sent to his federal public defender.

Nowhere do they mention the fellow's name. Why is that? Lots of other people have printed it. It's Neil McCarthy. At least some early reports said he was from Portland, but maybe that's just where he started his wigged-out trip.

Neil McCarthy, 25, from Oregon in the US, admitted to police he was “flicking the bean”… aboard the flight to New Hampshire on Wednesday, and blamed it on a medical urination problem, court papers allege.

McCarthy told police that he was drinking heavily throughout his journey — and that he had several “Jack and cokes” before boarding his initial flight in Portland, according to the criminal complaint filed in Buffalo federal court.

And that was at the old PDX. You can imagine how loaded he'd have gotten if it was the new, platinum-plated PDX, opening next month. Maybe he can cut the ribbon.

It sounds like the dude might have gone from Portland to Chicago on a red-eye flight. He appeared in court in the afternoon Buffalo time. 

Who knows? There may have been more than just alcohol involved.

Anyway, I dug out the criminal complaint, which doesn't add much, here. There's apparently a cell phone photo taken by a fellow passenger; mercifully, no one has published it. 

It's ridiculous that we don't get to see mugshots any more, but now even the names of the suspects temd to not get revealed. That's a pretty dangerous situation, for a lot of reasons.

Ironically, the federal magistrate judge assigned to the case in Buffalo is also named McCarthy.