Alaska Man, 28, Found Guilty After Repeatedly Molesting Minor Seated Next to Him on Plane By Chris Spargo 13

A federal jury has convicted a plane passenger accused of repeatedly molesting a minor traveling with her mother and friend.

Trayton Ballot, 28, of Deering, Alaska was found guilty of abusive sexual contact after a two-day trial in Seattle.

The jury returned that verdict after just an hour of deliberation, according to a news release from the Department of Justice.

The incident occurred on an Alaska Airlines flight out of Anchorage to Seattle-Tacoma International Airport on Jan. 15, 2025, according to a copy of the criminal complaint obtained by PEOPLE.

Ballot and the minor victim, 17, were seated in the same row, with the complaint noting that the teenager had the window seat while Ballot was in the middle.

“About an hour into the flight, Ballot, who appeared to be asleep, moved his hand onto [the victim’s] upper and inner thigh and began rubbing her thigh,” the complaint reads.

The teenager pushed away Ballot’s hand, but the man repeated this action two more times, and the teenager responded by pushing away his hand each time, according to the complaint.

This still did not deter Ballot.

The victim “then placed a pillow on her thighs and put the tray table down on over the pillow [and] Ballot moved his hand under the arm rest and tried to place his hand under the pillow and over her thigh,” reads the complaint.

At this point the teenager “pressed down on the pillow to stop him” and then composed a message which she showed both her mother and the friend she was also traveling with, per the complaint.

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The friend was seated on the aisle of the same row while the girl’s mother was in the row directly behind her, and the complaint states that the mother told her to get up and tell a member of the flight crew about the situation.

Ballot then pretended to be asleep, according to the complaint, and would not move as the girl tried to leave her seat, forcing her to climb over him and report his behavior to a flight attendant.

The flight attendant responded by moving the teenager to another seat, the complaint states, and also alerted law enforcement who were waiting to arrest Ballot at Seattle-Tacoma Airport upon landing.

Jurors convicted Ballot of abusive sexual contact, but also had the option of convicting him of the lesser charge of simple assault.

Ballot, whose federal public defender did not respond to a request for comment, faces up to two years in prison when he is sentenced by U.S. District Judge John H. Chun on December 15, 2025.