Track star Sha'Carri Richardson says she was removed from an American Airlines flight after arguing with a flight attendant

• Sha'Carri Richardson says she was removed from an American Airlines flight after an argument.
• The US track star shared videos on her social media showing her arguing with a flight attendant.

Sha'Carri Richardson said she was removed from an American Airlines flight after getting into an argument with a flight attendant who was "harassing" her.

The track and field star, 22, shared several videos and posts on Instagram of the incident on Saturday. She said the argument began when a flight attendant used a "tone" she did not like to tell her to end a phone call.

After their initial confrontation, Richardson claimed that when the flight attendant was demonstrating safety protocol, he leaned over to see her phone and demanded she put it in airplane mode.

"He asked to see that my phones were in airplane mode at this point. He demanded that me show him. Which I did in front of him," she wrote in an Instagram post shared to her story.

In a subsequent video, the flight attendant appears to tell Richardson to "stop recording," a request she said she would not do because he was harassing her. "This video will show what you are doing," she said.

Richardson also said other passengers on the flight began to yell at her amid the argument with the flight attendant and clapped when she got off the plane.

From the clips, it is unclear when or where the incident took place. American Airlines and representatives for Richardson did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Insider made outside normal working hours.

An airline representative said in a statement to NBC News: "We reaccomodated the customer on a later flight and a member of our team has reached out to learn more."

Richardson also wrote on Instagram: "As in the video you will hear caucasian men and women yelling and disrespecting me because I won't let this man disrespect me by abusing his authority. After watching this man put his hands in my face and talk to me unprofessional and actually clapped for this man actions as I got off the plane."

In a clip posted on her main Instagram feed, Richardson is heard telling another passenger that she "definitely would've listened to instructions" if he wasn't speaking to her unprofessionally. Later in the clip, a fellow passenger is heard telling Richardson he was missing a connection because of the delay caused by removing her from the flight.

"Thank you by the way," the passenger said. "I'm missing my connection."

"You're worried about a connection while a grown man is disrespecting me," she responded.

Afterward, an individual thought to work for the airline is heard telling Richardson that the captain wanted her removed from the flight. She asked for the flight attendant's name and said she believed he should also be removed from the flight.

The clip concludes with Richardson taking her personal items and leaving the plane while other passengers cheer. "You don't understand integrity and being a good person," she is heard telling another passenger.

Richardson made headlines in 2021 after she was suspended from the US Olympic team a month after testing positive for marijuana during the Olympic trials. She later told NBC's "Today Show" that she used marijuana after learning of the death of her biological mother a few days before the Olympic trials began.

In February 2022, Richardson accused authorities of double standards over the handling of her positive drug test in comparison to Kamila Valieva. The Russian skater tested positive for banned substances during the 2022 Beijing Olympics but was allowed to continue to compete, Insider previously reported.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) dismissed Richardson's claim that she was treated differently from Valieva.