http://www.boston.com/news/daily/06/plane_crash.htm

Police: Student pilot who crashed small plane had "sympathy" for bin Laden By Vickie Chachere, Associated Press, 01/06/02

A single engine airplane crashed into the Bank of America building in Tampa. (AP Photo)

TAMPA, Fla. -- The 15-year-old who crashed a small plane into a skyscraper wrote a note expressing sympathy for Osama bin Laden and support for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, police said Sunday.

The short, handwritten suicide note found in Charles Bishop's pocket said he acted alone, Tampa Police Chief Bennie Holder said. The high school freshman had few friends and no apparent terrorist ties, Holder said.

"Bishop can best be described as a young man who had very few friends and was very much a loner," Holder said. "From his actions we can assume he was a very troubled young man."

Bishop crashed the Cessna 172R into the 42-story Bank of America building after taking off without authorization and ignoring signals to land from a Coast Guard helicopter that pursued the plane. Bishop was the only fatality.

Holder said there is no indication Bishop specifically targeted the building or "had any intention of harming anyone else."

Investigators on Sunday interviewed the boy's family and said they would search his personal computer for evidence.

Bishop, of Palm Harbor, was told to check the plane's equipment before the start of a flying lesson Saturday, police said. He took off without waiting for an instructor who was supposed to accompany him.

A Coast Guard helicopter pilot motioned for the boy to land but couldn't get a response, and a pair of military jets scrambled to intercept the small plane arrived after the crash.

"There was no doubt he died on impact," said Fire Department Capt. Bill Wade.

Fire department officials said damage to the building was limited to the office where the plane hit and small areas of adjoining floors. Most of the building was expected to be open Monday, though there was concern about chunks of the facade falling to the sidewalk below.

Though terrorism was quickly discounted, images of the plane blasting a hole in the side of a skyscraper were chilling reminders of the World Trade Center attacks. Until it was pulled in early Sunday, the plane's tail had dangled from the 28th floor of the 42-story Bank of America building.

In Palm Harbor, police unrolled yellow crime scene tape outside the apartment complex where Bishop lived with his mother, while a stream of detectives and FBI agents interviewed family members Sunday.

Julia Bishop, the boy's mother, told a camera crew to "get out" when they attempted to film her as she opened her door for investigators.

Bishop's grandmother had taken him to the National Aviation Academy flight school at St. Petersburg-Clearwater International Airport for a 5 p.m. flying lesson on Saturday, said Marianne Pasha, a Pinellas County Sheriff's Office spokeswoman.

A Coast Guard helicopter caught up to Bishop over Tampa after he had traveled about 20 miles, and the crew signaled for him to land. Pilots said he ignored them, then plane crashed into the building.

As a precaution, two F-15 fighter jets were scrambled from Homestead Air Reserve Base, 200 miles away, but they arrived after the crash, said Capt. Kirstin Reimann at the North American Aerospace Defense Command.

Only a few office workers and the staff of a club were in the building at the time of the crash. None was injured.

Sheriff's Sgt. Greg Tita said there was no record of the ninth grader running into problems with the law in the past.

Derek Perryman, a classmate of Bishop's at East Lake High School in Palm Harbor, about 25 miles west of Tampa, said Bishop often talked about planes with a friend in their journalism class.

After the Sept. 11 terrorist, he said, Bishop read a paper to the class. "It was real expressive about how he felt, how disappointed he was," Perryman said.

Another classmate, Ross Stewart, 15, described Bishop as a "teacher's pet."

"I knew he was an honor student. He got straight A's," Stewart said. "He seemed to like his classes. He liked school. He was a happy kid. He was never really down about anything. He smiled a lot."

Neighbors said Bishop, who had moved from the Boston area a year earlier, kept to himself.

"He rode my bus to school. He sat in the front row. He always had sunglasses on for some reason," said David Ontiveros, 14. "He never talked to anybody."

The Bishops briefly lived in Massachusetts several years ago, some former neighbors recalled Sunday.

Bev Pinkham, who lived near them in Norwell, Mass., just outside Boston, said Bishop "was just an ordinary quiet kid."

"One day he came over and said my flower gardens were beautiful," she said. "Other than that, he was very quiet."

Michael Cronin, an attorney for the National Aviation Academy, said Bishop had been taking flying lessons since March 2001 and had logged about six hours of flight time.

He said the boy often cleaned planes in exchange for flight time and was very familiar with operations at the school. Cronin said students do preflight equipment checks on their own, then have their accuracy verified by an instructor. Bishop was a year shy of being able to fly alone and two years too young to earn a pilot's license.

President Bush was briefed on the incident and the White House officials had been in touch with Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge and the Federal Aviation Administration, said White House spokesman Scott McClellan. Two other small planes had crashed Saturday, one on a Colorado hillside near Boulder, and another in a vacant field near Los Angeles.

-- Anonymous, January 06, 2002

Answers

I don't know what to think of this incident. I'm aware that some 15 y.o.s have a lot of pressure on them, but enough for him to fly a plane into a building?!? Again, I ask: where the heck have the parents been? Don't parents *talk and LISTEN* to their youngsters, anymore?

I think Barefoot's comment on another thread is right on: I think we need to start holding parents more accountable for their children's actions.

-- Anonymous, January 06, 2002

I don't know if this was described in the articles, but on the news tonight they showed the flight path. First he takes off to the south and flies through restricted air space over the air force base? and then 180's and heads north to Tampa. Think I heard that the AFB was the headquarters of the Afghanistan campaign.

-- Anonymous, January 06, 2002

I heard that too, Brooks. My son at 15 was worse than a menopausal woman with PMS too. It was a VERY tough time, especially for a working mom. Luckily, I enrolled him in the Big Brothers program when he was 11, so his Big Brother was a big help. There'll be all kinds of blame on his mother, who I believe is divorced, but it's not at all easy to raise a kid alone these days. It wasn't when I was doing it and that was before $150 sneakers, leather bomber jackets, and playstations and such.

-- Anonymous, January 07, 2002

I agree with Old Git. If you haven't taken a shot at raising kids, especially through the teen age years, you have no idea what it's all about. I heard a great comment on the radio a couple years back. A guy was commenting on how to raise kids. He said that when he was in his 20's he had half a dozen theories on how to raise kids. He then said he was now in his 40's, with half a dozen kids, and no theories.

The information coming out about that 15 year old boy indicates he was all set to commit suicide and just used the airplane crash as a copy cat method. He is stated to have been a loner, with few friends. It all looks like just a classic teen suicide to me. 15 is a very bad time for kids, even when they are not suffering from identity crisis.

-- Anonymous, January 07, 2002

Yeah, but when loners took themselves out in the 70s, they generally managed to do it without creating a million dollar mess that *someone* will have to pay to clean up.

-- Anonymous, January 07, 2002

Meemur, that's getting towards why I regard his actions as an act of terrorism. He may not have been part of the international network, but he certainly contributed towards it.

-- Anonymous, January 07, 2002

If you haven't taken a shot at raising kids, especially through the teen age years, you have no idea what it's all about.

Well, let's just slam all those folks who don't have kids.

Get a reality check, Gordon. Folks without kids still live in the same world as folks with kids. They read the same papers and watch the same news shows, too. Not having kids does not mean they don't know anything about the process of raising them. They were kids once, too.

-- Anonymous, January 07, 2002

Sorry Barefoot, seems I hit a sensitive spot with you there. I sort of suspected you didn't have any kids, or at least any teenagers. Believe me, if you ever do get into raising kids you are in for the biggest shock of your life. *Then* you will discover what "reality checks" are all about. You know, there's a good reason why people who wish to practice certain disciplines such as medicine or psychology are required to train in that field, even though they all live in the same world, read the same stuff, were sick in the same ways as kids.

-- Anonymous, January 07, 2002

Believe me, if you ever do get into raising kids you are in for the biggest shock of your life.

I don't think so. Again, you assume that because I have no kids that I know nothing about raising them.

-- Anonymous, January 07, 2002

Barefoot, just to wax philosophical here for a moment, I would offer that it's Mother Nature's little trick on us to believe that we know what raising kids is all about before we even try to do it. Virtually everyone thinks they know how to do it, how to deal with the problems, but then get the big surprise starting at about age 13. Up to that point it's really pretty easy and kids do what they are told for the most part. When adolescence kicks in they start to go independent. That's when they begin to challenge you, argue with you, and even declare that you don't know what you are doing, that you are not all that smart (and they are) and that you neither understand nor appreciate their own right to live the way they please.

Then, when you try to control their irresponsible behavior, they simply "go underground" and do things behind your back. They manipulate, deceive, trick you, and lie right to your face. It's all natural, and only the extremes vary, not the basic program. Once they get into the terrible teens they don't get out of it until they hit about age 20 or so, and even then they will be doing some of the dumbest stuff you can imagine. Don't you remember doing all those things to your own parents? Maybe not. We all suffer from some selective memory disorders where our own life is remembered as pretty straight forward, honest, and respectful. Or, sometimes we choose to blame others, including our parents, for the many personal decisions and choices we made that turned out sour.

-- Anonymous, January 07, 2002

I really don't understand why you persist in telling me how it is with raising kids as if I don't know.

-- Anonymous, January 08, 2002