The off-duty pilot who allegedly tried to bring down the maximum capacity plane has opened up about the strange incident – claiming he thought he would have woken up from his mushroom trip if the flight had crashed.
“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 where he was being held. 83 charges of attempted murder.
The lifelong pilot claimed he suffered a mental breakdown for days and a spiral of paranoia that left him wondering if what he was experiencing was real or just a dream when he carried out the October 22 act.
Emerson’s delirium had begun two days earlier when he had taken magic mushrooms with friends during a weekend getaway to relive the life of one of their late friends.
The death of his friend in 2018 plunged Emerson into such deep grief that a therapist encouraged him to seek medical treatment for depression, which he avoided for fear that Virgin America’s strict guidelines against such prescriptions would prevent him from flying.
Joseph David Emerson claimed he had a psychotic break induced by a magic mushroom when he tried to crash the plane.POOL
Instead, he chose to self-medicate and tried hallucinogenics for the first time, which only started a week-long episode.
Emerson begins to feel uneasy and feels that his friends are teasing him and possibly planning to hurt him.
“I was scared of them,” he said, adding that he also “started to have the feeling that this wasn’t true.”
“I was thinking about a lot of traumatic things at that time where I was like, ‘Am I dead? Is this hell?'” she said. “I remember the trauma.”
Emerson faces 83 counts of attempted murder, one for each life on the flight.Joseph Emerson/Facebook
Emerson heads to the airport, where his sense that he is in purgatory grows stronger. He felt that nothing made sense, like the direction his GPS gave him and the way the flight attendant boarded the plane.
He texted his friend, stating that he believed he was having a panic attack.
The pilot said he appeared increasingly agitated during the hours-long flight from Washington to Oregon, until he finally passed out.
“I’m not OK,” Emerson said before scrambling to activate the jet’s two fire controls mid-flight as he sat in the cockpit — designed to cut off the fuel supply and shut down both engines.
Emerson repeatedly asked staff, police officers and his wife if what he was experiencing was real or if he was dreaming.Joseph Emerson/Facebook
The pilot grabbed his wrist and wrestled him from the controls, with Emerson eventually asking the flight attendant to hold him until the pilot could make an emergency landing.
“You have to pinch me now, or it’s going to be bad,” he said, according to a police officer who interviewed the flight crew.
Emerson continued to act erratically and sipped coffee straight from the pot until an attendant stopped him.
He asked the staff if it was true or if he was in a nightmare and tried to reach the emergency door, thinking that if he jumped he would wake up.
Emerson has struggled with untreated depression since the death of a close friend in 2018. Joseph Emerson/Facebook
“I had a mental breakdown and tried to shut down both engines on my flight home,” he wrote in a text to friends, writing to his wife in another: “I made a big mistake.”
Emerson was arrested during the emergency landing, but continued to question whether his conversation with the officer was true.
“If this is true, and all of it is real, then I have done something to me that is incomprehensible,” he told the police.
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.
Emerson also tried to open the emergency exit and jump from the plane during his terrifying flight.Joseph Emerson/Facebook
He repeatedly asked his wife over the phone “Is this true?” and will be the song in the middle of the conversation.
Less than five days after eating the mushroom, Emerson returned to reality.
“I was horrified because that action put myself at risk and other people at risk,” he said.
“The crew faced a situation where there were no written manuals, checklists or procedures. And they did an exemplary job keeping me and everyone else on the plane safe.”
Emerson is being held without bail on the state charges, one for each life that was on the plane during his psychotic break.
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
