The Price of Freedom is Worth the Cost
Teacher Arrested After Bookmark Called Concealed Weapon
"She was actually probably arrested because she was going to read on the airplane."
—Jim "Sweetcheeks" P.
POSTED: 10:17 am EDT September 17, 2004
TAMPA, Fla. -- A weight may soon be lifted off a Maryland woman charged with carrying a concealed weapon in an airport.
It wasn't a gun or a knife. It was a weighted bookmark.
Kathryn Harrington was flying home from vacation last month when screeners at the Tampa, Fla., airport found her bookmark. It's an 8.5-inch leather strip with small lead weights at each end.
Airport police said it resembled a weighted weapon that could be used to knock people unconscious. So the 52-year-old special education teacher was handcuffed, put into a police car, and charged with carrying a concealed weapon.
She faced a possible criminal trial and a $10,000 fine. But the state declined to prosecute, and the Transportation Security Administration said it probably won't impose a fine.
Harrington said she'll never again carry her bookmark into an airport.
"She was actually probably arrested because she was going to read on the airplane."
—Jim "Sweetcheeks" P.