ROME -- A ComAir flight attendant was arrested Thursday after being accused of starting an airplane lavatory fire that forced an emergency landing in Rome on May 8.

A federal grand jury indicted Turhan Jamar Lamons on a charge of attempting to set fire to, damage, destroy, disable and wreck ComAir Airlines Flight 5491 from Atlanta to Huntsville, Ala.

The 50-passenger plane landed at Richard B. Russell Regional Airport after reports of smoke coming from the lavatory. None of the 48 passengers and three crew was injured. Investigators found partially burned newspaper in the restroom.

Lamons, 23, also is charged in Clayton County, the site of Hartsfield Atlanta International Airport, with making a bomb threat against an AirTran Airways flight one week after Sept. 11, 2001, when he was a rookie flight attendant for AirTran.

Atlanta police accused Lamons of making the call because his request for a day off had been turned down and he did not want to fly.

A Clayton County magistrate dismissed the terroristic threat in October 2001, but the district attorney's office continued investigating and obtained an indictment against Lamons for the AirTran incident in April.

Lamons, of Morrow, was hired by ComAir, a Delta Air Lines subsidiary, in August 2002.

Lamons' lawyer, Robert Mack of Jonesboro, said his client has pleaded innocent to the Clayton charges. "I have no idea why they've charged him with that," the lawyer said.

Mack said he was unaware of the Rome indictment but knew Lamons was under investigation.

ComAir spokesman Nick Miller said Thursday that ComAir continuously reviews its employee applicant screening programs. Since May 8, Miller said, the airline has been rechecking the backgrounds of all its 5,500 employees.

He said flight attendants "go through all federally mandated background checks that all other airline employees do."