Man admits to stabbing passenger in eye during flight from Seattle to Las Vegas

A man admitted to assault with a deadly weapon after attacking another passenger on a flight from Seattle to Las Vegas in 2024, a July 2026 news release from the United States District Attorney’s Nevada Office says. 

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According to the release, Julio Alvarez Lopez bound three pens together with hair bands, punching and stabbing the passenger in the body and eye areas, requiring stitches. After physically assaulting him, Lopez began walking toward the front of the plane and was restrained for the remainder of the flight. Once the aircraft landed at Harry Reid International Airport in Las Vegas, Lopez told authorities that he “attempted to murder the victim by shoving the homemade weapon into the victim’s brain” because he had been looking at Lopez in a “harassing” manner, the news release said. 

A similar incident occurred in 2023, when Francisco Severo Torres, a resident of Massachusetts, attempted to stab a flight attendant in the neck with a broken metal spoon on a United Airlines flight from Los Angeles. According to a news release from the Massachusetts U.S. Attorney’s Office, Torres struck the attendant three times before getting tackled and restrained by passengers. In 2025, Torres was sentenced to time served and five years of supervised release. 

Lopez, who was granted permanent resident status from Mexico in 2018, was arrested by Nevada authorities and pleaded guilty to one count of assault with a dangerous weapon. He is scheduled to be sentenced Sept. 22. 

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