Today a federal judge ordered a psychiatric evaluation for a 31-year-old Turkish born Canadian citizen who allegedly stole a small plane from the flight school he attended in Thunder Bay, Ontario on Monday, then violated American airspace and gave chase to military fighter jets before landing on a dirt road in Missouri and running on foot.
Maybe he's crazy.
To demonstrate how the story has unfolded so far, here's a video from a Fox station in Wisconsin, which evacuated the state capital of Madison when when Adam Leon, aka Yavuz Burke, buzzed overhead. The anchor was careful to report that although two F-16s had been scrambled by NORAD, authorities had said there was no apparent threat of terrorism and that the evacuation was precautionary.
A few hours later, Anderson Cooper was tracking the story for CNN, reporting that the plane had landed on a dirt road in rural Missouri and that the suspect had fled authorities on foot. While Cooper opened the report, video showed a Canadian bomb squad robot probing the as-yet unidentified suspect's car outside the Confederation College flight school and the anchor mentioned a "single reliable source" telling CNN that a suicide note had been found nearby and that "the entire North American Air Defense Command sprang into action."
Wow, this story just got a whole lot scarier. Granted, the plane was already safely on the ground but the suspect still hadn't been apprehended. At the very least there was a dangerous nut on the loose in Missouri.
Then Cooper went to CNN's Homeland Security Correspondent Jeanne Meserve, who managed to spoil the tension by noting "the feeling all along was that he might not pose a serious threat because he kept flying over potential targets and wasn't doing anything destructive."
Sensing that all the drama had just been let out of the story, Cooper jumped back in with a hypothetical question about who would make the decision to shoot the plane down if this situation had been considered a serious threat. Watch the video to see how she answers. Then be sure to finish it so you can hear Anderson ask the same question to NORAD spokesman Mike Kucharek. But don't forget that the plane was already on the ground, and we still didn't know the suspect's motive.
The following day, U.S. Attorney Catherine Hannaway issued a news release naming the suspect, and announcing that he had been charged with "illegal entry into the United States" and "interstate transport of a stolen aircraft." The Missouri Highway Patrol picked him up at a truck stop in Ellsinore. And would you believe that stealing a plane and flying it across state lines could get you ten years in federal prison, but violating U.S. airspace in so doing only carries a maximum sentence of six months?
The Associated Press also issued this video report on Tuesday. Simple and straightforward, reporter Mike Gracia, talking over the same Canadian bomb robot footage Cooper showed on CNN, says it was brought in as a precaution and doesn't mention a nearby suicide note. The report includes the make and model of the plane and the suspect's name, that he was a student pilot and very little else. The AP wasn't inclined to speculate about his motive or to ask anyone else about it.
By Wednesday the AP's Jim Salter was reporting that authorities had said Burke was attempting suicide by F-16, but an FBI spokesman said a background check of the suspect found no links to terrorism. In a separate story, Salter also reported that NORAD had never seriously considered shooting down the plane.
And then ABC News ran with the suicide angle on Good Morning America, with Ryan Owens reporting that Burke had a "death wish" and was hoping the "fighter jets would shoot him down." But ABC also interviewed a friend of Burke's who said she guessed he was out for a "joy flight" or was looking for an "adrenaline rush." This video also includes an interview with the president of the flight school "where he stole the plane for his suicidal mission," Owens reported, who said Burke was "very personable, very polite and very engaged in class," Plus, Capt. Alek Lied, who was apparently following the suspect in an F-16 said "he kind of waved at me actually."
Then Owens revealed that the student pilot, asked why he had done it by investigators, said "he has not felt like himself lately," and had recently been treated by a psychiatrist.
