An unintended side effect of the Great White Up’s stricter gun control laws, perhaps:
A federal grand jury on Thursday indicted a man accused of stealing a plane in Canada and flying over Wisconsin and two other states before landing along a dark southern Missouri highway.
Adam Dylan Leon, 31, was indicted in St. Louis on federal charges of interstate transportation of a stolen aircraft, importation of a stolen aircraft and illegal entry.
Acting U.S. Attorney Michael Reap said Leon is accused of flying a stolen Cessna 172 aircraft into the U.S. on April 6 from an airport in Ontario, Canada. He faces a maximum of 20 years and six months in prison.
Authorities said Leon stole the plane from a flight school he attended and landed it more than seven hours later near a highway in southern Missouri. Leon allegedly told the FBI he was trying to commit suicide by U.S. fighter jet.
Methinks the young man is preparing an insanity defense. I mean, after all, Missouri?
So what’s wrong with Missouri? That is, if you’re not seeking out a NYC photo-op like our fearless leader?
Only that it’s not a critically important defense node like, say: Dubuque
I sure hope Lex isn’t thinking some non-PC thought like some of us Iowans that figure if we just donated the southern tier of Iowa counties to Missouri, we’d raise the IQ in both states – eh?
Bill K/
Hey Now! A good friend and former classmate who was a pitcher on LSU’s baseball team 62-64 is from Ottumwa–he’d take umbridge at that crack about southern Iowa! (although he DID end up further south in Baton Rouge–as did a Prairie Stater like me.
)
Sorry VX. But “What in heaven’s name brought you to Baton Rouge?” “My health. I came to Baton Rouge for the waters…”? I’d hate to think you were misinformed.
)
Bill K/
What brought me to Baron Rouge? Ans: The drinking age was 18 and BR was 90 mi from New Orleans.
That, and I was offered a tennis scholarship. Unlike today, when every decent-sized school has really fine indoor tennis facilities, in those days if one was serious about one’s tennis and wanted to play pretty much year round, it was either the South, SW, or SoCal. I’d had enough of the Midwest’s early springs–rain, cold spitting snow and constant wind–ALWAYS the wind–and tennis players HATE high winds. LOL!
Also LSU had an EXCELLENT AFROTC program and martial tradition. The 1st President of LSU was Gen. W.T. Sherman (pre-Civil War at LSU’s precursor, Louisiana Military Institute–LMI–and thus one of our nicknames is “The Old War Skule.”–I was housed in a set of old pre-Civil War stone and tiled roof barracks used as dorms nicknamed the “Pentagon,” as there were four separate bldgs arranged like the Pentagon with the Campus Drive as it’s base. Un-airconditioned when I was there, with 14 foot ceilings) and the President during my time was one of Patton’s war-time generals, Lt. Gen Troy H. Middleton.
One of the main features of the campus is the memorial tower, or Campanile, a memorial to LSU’s WWI dead, and the baseball stadium, “Box Stadium” (LSU is in the College World Series finals, btw, going after our 6th Nat. Championship) is named after a WWII hero Alex Box, who majored in Petroleum Engineering and played baseball and half-back on the football team at LSU, was awarded the nations second highest award for heroism, the Distinguished Service Cross in N. Africa for an action with the 1st Inf Div, and was killed laying a mine field in Tunisia (was a combat engineer.)
Plus I really, really like Gumbo
PS: Our school yearbook is called “The Gumbo.”
So would you do it all over again? I noticed, nothin in there about wimin as they call ‘em in Missou. (How do you know you’re in a redneck state? It’s where the menfolk go to family reunions trying to pick up dates…)
By the way, Lex, I resemble that remark! If you ever make unscheduled ground contact in Dubuque, I’d be pleased ta meet ya in a most personal way, seein as how I’ve been a surgeon there.
Anesthetic with or without beer?
Bill K/
The wimmin? As the older generation used to say: “Oh Lordy” A wild and exotic time… Fate is a funny thing, when I wondered if I would ever make it back, as I contemplated a career in the Air Force and 29-30 yrs of being stationed all over the US/World. As fate would have it ended up at USL (U. of SW LA) in Lafayette, La. yrs ltr in grad school (long story–too long for here) where I met a Creole beauty RN from Opelousas, La. (home of Jim Bowie, btw) getting her MS in abnormal Psych. All my friends and fraternity brothers said I’d better hang on to her as only a woman well schooled in abnormals could put up with me,
so I did–and somehow it’s been 36 yrs now….can’t afford to leave for that “other younger woman,”
I’m too hooked on Creole cookin’.
“There Had to be a Simpler Way”
Not to mention cheaper. That would be one hell of an expensive way to go.
He’s just testing us for the invasion, I tell ya!
(75% of the population within 90 miles of our border and whatnot.)
Just find any open mountain pass and stroll on through. That’s how they do it in B.C.
What’d the Feds think this guy was going to do, smash the B-2 line at Whiteman?
MO isn’t too bad, at least parts of STL aren’t.
Gets a little Deliverance if you head south though….
What’s with the “illegal entry” charges? Didn’t our Homeland Security poobah say that coming into the US without bothering with border formalities wasn’t really a crime? She really knows her US Code. Gotta keep those pesky Canadians in their place.
Lex opines, “Methinks the young man is preparing an insanity defense. I mean, after all, Missouri?”
I’d counter he has already prepared for an insanity defense. I mean, after all, landing?
– Max
[...] Neptunus Lex says there must’ve been an easier way to commit suicide. [...]
Hey now, I sought asylum in Missouri from Calif. It’s a FAR better place than either CA or CA
Bill K/
Upon further reflection about our exchange, and the state of Missou in general. I would make the observation that Missouri is one of those unique pivotal places that is neither fish nor foul. “Southerners” think of it as a mid-western or even northern state, “Easterners” think it in the west, while those in the west think it to be singularly mid-western in nature. While those in the mid-west to the north of it think of it as a southern state even as they hold St, Louis and Kansas City to be solid bastions of pure mid-westernism. Of course these disparate views are partly due to it’s geographical position in the center of the nation, but also because of the cultural divide between northern and southern parts of the state–much as in Illinois, Ind, and even southern Ohio.
(The same could be said about La., with the largely Catholic southern part and the northern Baptist Bible-belt part that shares more with Texas and Ark than the southern part of the State.)
In fact, almost every state has some sort of cultural and/or geographical divide. In Ky. it’s east-west with a northern enclave across from Cincy. Same for some cities. Bob Edwards, late of NPR and a native of Louisville (where we lived for 18 yrs) once said of it: “Louisville is neither especially southern nor especially mid-western–but especially ‘neither.’ ” LOL!! SO TRUE!! ……..and, I would, argue, the same for Missouri. Collectively, it is neither exactly mid-western nor exactly southern in nature–but exactly “neither.”
I agree.
AND I suspect Lex has the advantage hosting this blog and knowing just how to twist the knife as our URLs roll in (“Not a critically important defense node like, say: Dubuque”
My compliments for a nice shot out! But how’d he know where to fire for effect?
Oh, I get the advantage of seeing the email registrations roll in. Some of them even end in “dbq.edu”
Some of them.
Lex/
So which part of the address raised your hackles? The “dbq” part or the “edu.” part? ‘Cause one “affliction” is but geographic; the other eternally generic.
Oh, I was totally hackle-less. Just having a bit of site-owner fun.
Lex/
LOL. Either I’ve lost the power/touch to have verbal fun, or you’ve lost the power to decode same. I KNEW you were (pretty much always are) “hackle-less”–just trying to have some fun stirring the pot…
VX/
Let’s you & I pretend that Mr. Site-owner here is an ayatollah in a certain “democratic” country, who’s got some mighty-fine investigational software, makin’ his list & checkin’ it twice. We’re asking ourselves, “What is this Place?”. Are ya gettin the willies? That old familiar feelin this-here revenuer might be a bit too close to the still? Or are you twitterpated by his siren-song, the pure word from on high?
Not sure they would shoot him down, but don’t forget the B-2 are based at Whiteman AFB in Missouri, as well as the Navy Reserve’s Maritime Expeditionary Security Division 13.