An off-duty Alaska Airlines pilot who allegedly tried to take down a crowded flight during a magic mushroom trip avoided a charge of attempted murder in a grand jury indictment Monday.
Joseph Emerson, 44, was charged with one count of endangering an aircraft and 83 counts of recklessly endangering another person – but escaped the 83 counts of attempted murder originally sought by Oregon prosecutors.
A Multnomah grand jury determined the longtime pilot was not trying to harm anyone during the crisis, his attorney said in a statement.
Emerson was in the cockpit jump seat as a standby worker passenger on a Horizon Air flight Oct. 22 when he tried to activate the jet’s two fire-stop handles — designed to cut off the fuel supply and shut down both engines — midway through a trip from Everett, Washington. to San Francisco, California, authorities said.
Joseph Emerson, 44, is accused of trying to shut down the Horizon Air jet engine. via REUTERS
The pilot and first officer on duty were able to stop Emerson before he could reach the controls and the flight crew restrained him until the plane landed safely in Portland, Oregon.
“You have to pinch me now, or it’s going to be bad,” Emerson told them, according to a police officer who interviewed the flight crew.
He was arrested at the gate where he told police he had suffered a mental breakdown for days and hadn’t slept in 40 hours after taking psychedelic mushrooms with friends during a weekend getaway.
Emerson says he can’t tell if something is real life or a nightmare and believes he might actually be in hell.
“I thought it was going to stop both engines, the plane was going to start heading toward the crash, and I was going to wake up,” Joseph Emerson, 44, told The New York Times in an interview from the county jail in Portland last month.
He texted friends that he was having a mental breakdown and texted his wife that he “made a big mistake.”
In the airport detention room, Emerson strips naked, tries to jump out the window, urinates and masturbates – all in the hope that he will wake up.
“If this is true, and all of it is real, then I have done something to me that is incomprehensible,” he told the police.
Once he finally got off the trip – five days after eating the mushrooms – he said he was “horrified” that his actions on the plane had put lives at risk.
Emerson has also been charged in US District Court and has a hearing on Wednesday.
With Postal wire
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
