Pilot Of Stolen Thunder Bay Plane Arrested Hours Later In U.S.
Posted April 7, 2009 12:00 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
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 on Monday night.
The plane was reported stolen Monday afternoon from Confederation College Flight School at Thunder Bay International Airport in Ontario. It was intercepted by F-16 fighters from the Wisconsin National Guard after crossing into the state near the Michigan border.
The pilot was flying erratically and didn’t communicate with the fighter pilots, said Mike Kucharek, spokesman for the North American Aerospace Defense Command in Colorado.
The pilot had acknowledged seeing the F-16s but he didn’t obey their nonverbal commands to follow them, Kucharek said.
The approaching flight prompted a brief, precautionary evacuation of the Wisconsin capitol in Madison, although there were few workers in the building at the time and the governor was not in town.
The Cessna 172 continued south over Illinois and eastern Missouri before landing near Ellsinore, about 200 kilometres south-southwest of St. Louis.
The plane landed about six hours after the reported theft, and had enough fuel for about eight hours of flight, NAADC officials said.
“We tailed it all the way,” Maj. Brian Markin said. “Once it landed our aircraft returned to base.”
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.
