NJ Woman Who Led Motorized Suitcase Chase in Airport is Arrested Again

A New Jersey woman who last year made headlines in Florida by fleeing a police officer on a motorized suitcase at Orlando Airport has been arrested for a second time.

Chelsea Alston was taken into custody by U.S. Marshals agents in Irvington on Saturday, according to NBC New York, after failing to appear in court in March on charges stemming from the April 2021 incident.

The 32-year-old Perth Amboy resident, according to an arrest affidavit, repeatedly spit at police officers while resisting arrest last year.

Then once inside a patrol vehicle, police said Alston urinated and defecated in the car, while also flipping her handcuffs to the front and ripping apart the “headliner” above her seat, doing about $1,200 in damages.

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Body camera footage as shared by WKMG-TV on YouTube shows the police officer last year telling Alston that she can get on a later Southwest flight, as she’s too drunk to fly — to which Alston says she’s not that intoxicated.

She then flips off the officer, while cursing and taking off on the motorized suitcase.

The officer then pursues on his bike, catching up to Alston on an airport shuttle and gets her to move to the boarding platform. She refuses his offers to “roll out together.”

He asks Alston if she wants to race and says he would then leave her alone, which she still refuses, and then he eventually says she will be arrested for disorderly conduct.

After being handcuffed, Alston is seen spitting at the officer and then denies spitting more than once.

In the arrest affidavit, the officer says he shut off his body camera in order to secure his department-issued bicycle at the airport and then switched to a camera on his laptop for the ride to a department, during which Alston is accused of the extensive damages to the cruiser.

Alston has been facing charges of battery on a law enforcement officer, assault on a law enforcement officer, resisting an officer with violence and criminal mischief over $1,000 — to which she had pleaded not guilty.