Woman says she was strip-searched at JFK

An 85-year-old Long Beach woman on Sunday continued to criticize her treatment by Kennedy Airport security screeners, saying she was strip-searched after declining to pass through a body scanner.

Transportation Security Administration officials have denied the allegations made by Lenore Zimmerman, who was flying to Florida for the winter.

The woman said she was set to travel via JetBlue Tuesday to Fort Lauderdale when she reached security, and asked for a pat-down or wand instead of entering an advanced image technology screening machine.

With her use of a defibrillator, Zimmerman said she always tries to avoid those machines. This time, she said, a female TSA employee took her into a private room and made her take off her clothes, including her underwear.

"I'm in a wheelchair, I have a metal walker," she told Newsday via phone from Coconut Creek, Fla. "If I'm what they call a security threat, then our country is in big trouble."

The TSA issued a statement saying, "While we regret that the passenger feels she had an unpleasant screening experience, TSA does not include strip searches as part of our security protocols and one was not conducted in this case."

Officials said Zimmerman's 11-minute screening in a private room -- at her request -- wasn't recorded.

"TSA screening procedures are conducted in a manner designed to treat all passengers with dignity, respect and courtesy and that occurred in this instance," the statement said.

But Zimmerman said Sunday that the TSA's denial had made her angrier. She added that no one from the agency had contacted her.

"I missed my flight, I waited 2½ hours for the next flight," she said. "They can't tell me I imagined this."

The retiree said she also cut her shin on her metal walker during the search.

"My mother is a little old woman. She's not disruptive or uncooperative," her son Bruce Zimmerman said. "I don't understand how this happened."

He said she's had an increasingly difficult time traveling, especially since her husband died a few years ago. She has two grandchildren, and her older son, a doctor, died in 2007.

Lenore Zimmerman noted that she won't be flying again until April, when she's scheduled to return to Long Beach.

"I never, in my wildest dreams, imagined such a thing could happen," she said.

With AP