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After 53 year-old Joseph Stack, software engineer, flew his small single-engine Piper Cherokee plane into an office building containing roughly 200 IRS workers, one person was missing.
The Texas pilot never filed a flight plan, before he flew low across the thirty miles to the seven-story black-glass building located in a heavily congested area of Austin. Stack’s plane hit the side of the building just before 10.00am with a thunderous explosion.
President Barak Obama was briefed, in a grim reminder of 9/11 2001. Two F-16 fighter jets from Houston were scrambled by the Pentagon and told to patrol the area over the burning building, prior to the authorities discovering it was the act of a lone pilot.
13 IRS workers were injured, with two left in a critical condition. The worst of the damage was to the second and third floors.
Many employees, unable to use the stairwell, were forced to break windows and climb out onto a ledge before being rescued by firefighters. Austin Police Chief Art Acevedo reported ‘heroic actions’ by federal employees may explain why the death toll was so low.
Some saw Stack only as a quiet father who visited Norway each year to see his daughter and grandchildren and a bass guitar and piano player of the Billy Eli Band. They never knew Stack secretly held a burning passion against the government and in particular the IRS.
"I figured he was going to buzz the apartments or he was showing off. It was insane. It didn't look like he was out of control or anything," said Matt Farney, who was in the parking lot of a nearby Home Depot near some apartments, just before it crashed.
Stack’s wife and step-daughter watched from the street on Thursday morning and saw the family home destroyed to the ground. Stack set the empty house alight, before taking off from a Georgetown airport.
Publishing a letter on the Internet, that was part auto-biographical and part suicide note, Stack laid the blame on the IRS for the destruction of his career.
In 1994 Stack had failed to file a tax return because he earned no income. A recent audit, however, by the IRS discovered nearly $13,000 of unreported income, earned by his second wife Sheryl. Stack never discussed with his friends, his long-running and bitter disputes with the IRS, which cost him over $40,000.
Fellow band member Cerza stated “Joe was very straight – he didn’t smoke or drink. He was intelligent. He would be the guy who would choose not to say anything in a group of people.”
About Repeat of 9/11 Nightmare
When a Texas man flew his single engine plane into the side of an IRS building, shades of 9/11 were repeated. For more information:
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