A 15-year-old student pilot, flying a small plane without permission and pursued by a US Coast Guard helicopter, crashed into a skyscraper in Tampa, Florida, authorities said.
Tampa Fire Department officials presume the pilot, Charles Bishop of Palm Harbor, was killed in the Saturday evening crash but could not positively identify him until the wreckage was secured.
Crews pulled the wreckage into the building early yesterday and intended to dismantle it, Tampa Police spokeswoman Katie Hughes said.
PHOTO: AP
The crash occurred after Bishop's grandmother took him to the National Aviation Academy flight school for a 5pm flying lesson, said Marianne Pasha, a Pinellas County Sheriff's Office spokeswoman. She said an instructor told Bishop to check equipment on the four-seat 2000 Cessna 172R before the lesson.
"The next thing the instructor knew he was gone," Pasha said.
Though terrorism was quickly discounted, the televised image of a plane blasting a hole in the side of a skyscraper was a chilling reminder of the Sept. 11 attacks on New York's World Trade Center. The plane's tail dangled near the 28th floor of the 42-story Bank of America building.
Only a few office workers and the staff of a club in the building were present at the time of the crash. None was injured.
Michael Cronin, an attorney for the National Aviation Academy, said Bishop had been taking lessons since March and had logged about six hours of flight time.
He said the boy often bartered to clean planes in exchange for flight time and was quite familiar with operations at the school. Cronin said students do preflight equipment checks on their own, then have their accuracy verified by an instructor.
"The bottom line is he essentially stole the aircraft," Cronin said. "We aren't going to speculate what his mental state or motivations were."
A Coast Guard HH60 Jayhawk helicopter on routine patrol intercepted the plane and attempted to give the pilot visual signals to land at a small airport, but the pilot did not respond, Coast Guard Lieutenant Charlotte Pittman said.
Sheriff's Sergeant Greg Tita said the FBI was interviewing Bishop's family and that there was no record of the ninth grader running into problems with the law in the past.
The 28th floor houses the law firm of Shumaker, Loop and Kendrick. Managing partner Greg Yadley said one attorney and her husband were in the offices at the time of the crash, but were not injured. An hour before, he said, an attorney had been at a desk the plane smashed into.
"It could have been possibly a tragic situation," Yadley said. "We were lucky."
Attorney Rogell Rovell was working on the 41st floor Saturday when the plane crashed.
"I heard a loud bang," said Rovell. "It wasn't particularly loud. It sounded like an electrical transformer blowing."
ROLLER-COASTER RIDE: More than five earthquakes ranging from magnitude 4.4 to 5.5 on the Richter scale shook eastern Taiwan in rapid succession yesterday afternoon Back-to-back weather fronts are forecast to hit Taiwan this week, resulting in rain across the nation in the coming days, the Central Weather Administration said yesterday, as it also warned residents in mountainous regions to be wary of landslides and rockfalls. As the first front approached, sporadic rainfall began in central and northern parts of Taiwan yesterday, the agency said, adding that rain is forecast to intensify in those regions today, while brief showers would also affect other parts of the nation. A second weather system is forecast to arrive on Thursday, bringing additional rain to the whole nation until Sunday, it
LANDSLIDES POSSIBLE: The agency advised the public to avoid visiting mountainous regions due to more expected aftershocks and rainfall from a series of weather fronts A series of earthquakes over the past few days were likely aftershocks of the April 3 earthquake in Hualien County, with further aftershocks to be expected for up to a year, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Based on the nation’s experience after the quake on Sept. 21, 1999, more aftershocks are possible over the next six months to a year, the agency said. A total of 103 earthquakes of magnitude 4 on the local magnitude scale or higher hit Hualien County from 5:08pm on Monday to 10:27am yesterday, with 27 of them exceeding magnitude 5. They included two, of magnitude
CONDITIONAL: The PRC imposes secret requirements that the funding it provides cannot be spent in states with diplomatic relations with Taiwan, Emma Reilly said China has been bribing UN officials to obtain “special benefits” and to block funding from countries that have diplomatic ties with Taiwan, a former UN employee told the British House of Commons on Tuesday. At a House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee hearing into “international relations within the multilateral system,” former Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) employee Emma Reilly said in a written statement that “Beijing paid bribes to the two successive Presidents of the [UN] General Assembly” during the two-year negotiation of the Sustainable Development Goals. Another way China exercises influence within the UN Secretariat is
Taiwan’s first drag queen to compete on the internationally acclaimed RuPaul’s Drag Race, Nymphia Wind (妮妃雅), was on Friday crowned the “Next Drag Superstar.” Dressed in a sparkling banana dress, Nymphia Wind swept onto the stage for the final, and stole the show. “Taiwan this is for you,” she said right after show host RuPaul announced her as the winner. “To those who feel like they don’t belong, just remember to live fearlessly and to live their truth,” she said on stage. One of the frontrunners for the past 15 episodes, the 28-year-old breezed through to the final after weeks of showcasing her unique