Posted on 04/07/2009 5:33:32 AM PDT by Loyalist
WAUSAU, Wis. - A man suspected of stealing a plane from Canada, flying erratically over three states and attracting U.S. fighter escorts was in custody Tuesday after landing on a rural Missouri road and fleeing by foot.
Adam Dylan Leon, 31, was arrested near a grocery store in Ellsinore, Mo., shortly after police said he landed the single-engine, four-seat Cessna to end a six-hour flight Monday night.
The Missouri state trooper who arrested Leon said on ABC's "Good Morning America" that the pilot told him he had hoped to be shot down.
"He made a statement that he was trying to commit suicide and he didn't have the courage to do it himself. And his idea was to fly the aircraft into the United States, where he would be shot down," Trooper Justin Watson said on ABC.
....
The pilot's motive was not immediately known. FBI spokesman Richard Kolko told CNN that Leon was a native of Turkey who changed his name from Yavuz Berke and became a Canadian citizen last year.
(Excerpt) Read more at ca.news.yahoo.com ...
This, ladies and gentlemen, is what's called a buried lead.
Buried right at the end for two reasons: so that editors who don't want to offend certain sensibilities can cut it out of their stories for "space" reasons, and also so that AP can claim that it fearlessly reported this crucial fact without actually reporting it.
It’s one of two things:
1) He’s a total idiot thinking he’d be shot down for flying around iradically and landing near a grocery store in, of all places, Ellsinore, Mo. as opposed to a sure thing of attemping a landing on the WH in DC.
2) He’s a scout for the bad guys trying out a new game plan and seeing our reaction.
I vote for the second scenerio.
The craft is rated to fly 1065nm, which might have been shorted by flying lower altitudes.
HF
I had a feeling...none of the early reports were giving his name. I thought, hmmm, probably from that great religion that has taught us so much.
Lets review - he immigrated to Canada (super easy). Changed his name to not sound Arab....and STOLE A FREAKING AIRPLANE. Perhaps this should be getting a wee bit more press. We are back to September 10.
I didn’t realize a 172 would go that far on one load of fuel.
Therefore, as a test run, it must be for something unconventional (NBC?), as a signal, or to deliver something/someone the plane can carry.
Is the pilot sick, and here to pass something along?
Absolutely. They lead off the second sentence with his innocuous-sounding ‘name’, but only deep down in the story report that that’s not his name any more, that he’s from Turkey, and that he only became a Canadian citizen last year.
That was normal behavior for mooselimbs. They usually fly into buildings.
I thought his name was Yavuz Berke?
the muzzies are going to try and take out the Clinton Presidential Library and Massage Parlor??
i had heard he was flying at 14,000 feet. is that low altitude?
Fox reporting on it now with the ‘official’ line from the officials that the man was just depressed. (eye roll) They are reporting that the man was from Turkey and had changed his name.
DRY RUN FOLKS and we did not pass the ‘test’!!
Bingo!
Fox just reported the guy was a Turk. He had changed his name.
Kazow! No, I hadn't heard that. He would've needed a flight plan for that to be legal (^12,500 ft.). His transponder would've certainly been altitude-reporting, being based in Thunder Bay, though if one steals an aircraft and evasion is obviously part of the plan, perhaps you'd turn that off. Maybe the F-16s made the altitude determination.
If he had a flight plan that showed a border crossing, the people in the US certainly expect him to report at his announced destination for customs formalities. Perhaps when he didn't do that, suspicions were aroused.
FL140 (14,000 ft.) is darned high for a 172. I would think you'd need to be awfully light to do it, though its service ceiling is FL170.
FL140 is awfully high for an pilot unprepared for such an altitude. Unless he had oxygen, his perceptive functions would almost certainly have been severely degraded.
FL140 is an altitude very few students experience before they have hundreds of hours of training, or unless perhaps they have a military flight background (big red flag here!).
HF
None of the ones I remember flying would. Nor would they be able to stay up in the air for six hours.
ML/NJ
For being suicidal, he sure was capable.
We will never know.
Being legal didn't seem to be one of this guy's main concerns. (You need a flight plan just to cross into the United States.)
ML/NJ
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