LOS ANGELES : Charge Reduced in Alleged Harassment of Girl on Plane

A man accused of harassing a young girl on a flight from Los Angeles to Las Vegas will face a reduced charge of annoying a minor, a prosecutor said Wednesday.

Robert Edward Gustafson, 48, of Hermosa Beach, was arrested in Las Vegas on Feb. 27 after a 12-year-old girl complained that he touched her repeatedly on the flight despite her efforts to get him to stop. Gustafson was charged with open and gross lewdness with a child under 14, but that charge has been dropped, John Lukens, chief deputy district attorney for Clark County, Nevada, said Wednesday. Gustafson now faces a misdemeanor charge of annoying a minor.

“It was a matter of interpretation,” Lukens said Wednesday. “The conduct was inappropriate and offensive, but I’m not sure I could establish it as being lewdness at trial.”

He said he would have to prove Gustafson’s intent was to arouse himself or the young girl to get a conviction on the lewdness charge. “There was no touching that was specifically sexual,” Lukens said, but rather incidents like reaching across to raise or lower the window shade on the plane, and touching the top of the breast.

The girl was returning from Los Angeles to Las Vegas on a Southwest Airlines flight when she reported the incident.

Her parents said Gustafson trapped the girl in an inside seat and touched her repeatedly throughout the flight. They said she called out, “Stop touching me,” but that flight attendants and other passengers ignored her.