JOLIET, IL — A 50-year-old man from Plainfield is speaking out about what he believes was an incredible act of injustice performed by the employees at the Louis Joliet Mall's Cinemark movie theater on Mall Loop Drive. On Friday, Joliet's 1340 WJOL radio morning show host Scott Slocum interviewed Rich Bontkowski, who recently went to see the latest "Avengers" movie at the Cinemark theater along with his wife. However, shortly into the movie, Cinemark movie theater employees asked Bontkowski to leave the show because of his disability, he said in the WJOL interview.

Here were some of the key points mentioned by Bontkowski during the WJOL interview:

"I had a recent amputation of my right lower leg in March ... We wanted to see 'The Avengers.' This night was pretty important ... We were excited. I'm actually new to being in a wheelchair."

The couple purchased their movie tickets and entered the theater only to realize that all four of the handicapped seats were already taken. Under no circumstances, Bontkowski said, would he ever have approached the people sitting there to ask them whether they were handicapped.

Given his predicament, he and his wife spoke with one of Cinemark's managers who suggested they sit in the nearby D-Box seats. Cinemark's website describes D-Box seats this way: "With D-BOX, you control the intensity so you can move with the movie and feel every scene as if you were in it. We remove the line between you and the screen to create hyper-realistic, immersive, one-of-a-kind entertainment experiences that pull you into the story like never before."

Bontkowski said he is not a fan of the D-Box seats, because he has motion sickness, but decided to make the best of the situation and sit there.

"I guess the initial plan was that they carry me to a seat," he told WJOL's Slocum. "Pick me up and carry me to a seat. That presents a whole bunch of difficult risks and problems. As a big company, I would think that would be a big no-no."

About 10 minutes into "The Avengers," one of the Cinemark employees came back. This time, Bontkowski and his wife were being ejected, he told WJOL.

"Ten minutes into the experience, after sitting down and enjoying our concessions, suddenly I hear a voice saying, 'You need to leave.' You can image our shock ... they just simply said you need to leave. It was probably one of the most humiliating, embarrassing (times) I think I've ever been in."

Befuddled, Bontkowski told WJOL, he and his wife asked why they were being thrown out of the movie, even though they had bought tickets.

"Eventually, they told us, well, someone else has purchased these seats," Bontkowski told WJOL. "First of all, why did you sit us there? ... In the confusion of them ejecting us from the theater ... I consequently lost my ticket stub and we lost our concessions ..."

To listen to the entire 19-minute radio interview with Bontkowski, follow this link to the WJOL site.

Chicago television reporter Dana Kozlov of CBS News also interviewed Bontkowski and his wife last week. CBS indicated they reached out to Cinemark's corporate office in Texas for comment, but the theater chose not to reply.

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