WATCH: Woman Kicked Off Southwest Flight for Petting Newly Adopted Dog, Other Flyers Booted for Supporting Her

A woman was kicked off a Southwest flight for petting her newly adopted puppy, and one witness is speaking out about the incident. 

On Saturday, Sara Price posted a video on TikTok showing a fellow passenger being removed from their Southwest flight out of Colorado Springs after multiple run-ins with the flight attendants over the unnamed passenger’s new pet. 

Price tells PEOPLE that she and her husband were standing in line near the other passenger waiting to board the plane. She says the woman’s puppy “whined a little” when “​​the lady from Southwest checking boarding passes came flying over and said ‘if you can’t keep that dog quiet, you may not be able to fly.’” 

In the caption of her TikTok, Price said that the woman stuck her hand inside the carrier to soothe the animal. “It stopped whining,” she wrote. 

Price tells PEOPLE that after this initial incident she told the flight attendant that she and her husband would sit with the unnamed passenger “to help her as much as we could.” 

The group boarded, sitting together, while the woman held the carrier on her lap, petting the puppy inside the carrier to keep it from whining. Price said that the same flight attendant then came over and told the woman, “that carrier has to be zipped all the way, and the dog has to be under the seat.”

“Everyone around us was so confused as to why they were so harsh with her,” Price adds, saying the woman “did as she was told and zipped the carrier completely and put it under the seat.” 

Then, Price tells PEOPLE a flight attendant “dressed as a cat” approached the woman asking, “are we going to have a problem here?” but the passenger explained that the pup was locked away inside the carrier under the seat in front of her. 

Unfortunately, shortly after the plane pushed off from the gate, the dog whined again, so the woman “[bent] down to pet the puppy again from outside the carrier,” Price explains. She then noticed the attendants huddled toward the front of the plane. 

After the crew’s brief meeting, the plane returned to the gate. Upon arrival, “the attendants walked up to her and asked her to leave the plane.”

The woman got off the plane, but not without asking Price’s husband to film a video of the interaction that later became the TikTok she shared. 

As she was being removed from the flight, the crew offered to help her with her bags. She denied this help, telling the attendants, “I’m not going to have you touch a thing of mine. You are rude. You are a mean person, and I will never fly Southwest again.” 

“We’re aware of the videos and our initial reports indicate that the customer would not comply with keeping her dog’s kennel closed, which is our policy,” a spokesperson said in a statement. “Our employees are trained to ensure customers are following protocol, and in this situation and after the customer repeatedly refused to comply with our crew’s instructions, the decision was made to deplane the disruptive passenger.”

As the video ends, the couple offers the woman their condolences as Price and her husband tell the workers, “this is ridiculous,” and “you should be ashamed of yourself.” Price tells PEOPLE that after the video cut, one of the attendants went to speak with the captain prompting the flight crew to “[kick] us off for our ‘attitude.’”

Price added that “a few other passengers left the plane in protest and ended up on our United flight,” following the passenger and couple’s departure. 

Price tells PEOPLE that as of Wednesday, her fellow passenger has not been refunded the full price of her ticket, but both she and her husband have been.