TARPON SPRINGS, Fla.-- Passengers aboard the Sponge-o-rama cruises boat smiled as they returned to the dock after their Monday afternoon adventure. But Friday afternoon, things were a quite different.
"Lady came on the boat. She was being, very, very unruly. Started touching people and you just can't do that. You can't sexually harass people," said the boat captain.
Boat captain, Angelo, who didn't want to appear on camera, is talking about Lisa Matteson.
Xanthi Zembillas, who sells cruise tickets, heard on the radio, the boat was returning to the dock. "The lady, Lisa, apparently groped his ( a passenger's) wife once. And then she did it again."
Captain Angelo tried to intervene.
"She got up and she groped the husband. So after she groped the husband, she turns around and tells the husband, that you need to take your family and go back to where you came from," Zembillas said.
It's a phrase we've heard the president use, prompting fierce debate.
The passengers involved are from Saudi Arabia.
"He didn't appreciate what she said. And I said, I wouldn't appreciate something like that myself. And especially with 2 young children," Zembillas said.
"She came in the wheel house. She touched me one time and I told her, keep your hands to yourself. Touched a young lady on the boat on the bow there and called her inside the wheel house and told her listen, if you don't stop, we're turning around and she did it one more time and we turned the boat around and she was very unruly the whole way back," Angelo said.
Back to the dock, where Tarpon Springs police were waiting with handcuffs.
Lisa Matteson didn't come to the door at her Port Richey home.
This nature cruise proved to be a little too natural.
"That's the first time that ever happened here. Hopefully the last," Angelo said.
The witness in the ticket booth said the passenger wouldn’t have pressed charges, except for the “go back to the country you came from” line, WFLA reported.
Matteson faces a misdemeanor battery charge, according to the Associated Press.
The AP contributed to this report.
