Wow.
Funny how these stories catch and hold our attention-pilots and mere humans, alike
Relieved and happy no one was seriously hurt.
Obviously a cry for help. That doesn’t excuse the threat to crash into a Walmart, of course. This “pilot” ‘s life is effectively over. He’ll go to prison, and emerge even less employable. Prison will be a brutal experience for an unstable, previously gainfully employed, non career criminal
Even with a king air- his payload is less than what a sprinter van holds. Folks deliberately crash cars and trucks into buildings, or do so while intoxicated, and it barely registers on our national consciousness
Think of what Anne Heche did-in a Mini!- endangering folks in two vehicles she hit, almost hitting a pedestrian, and destroying a house (and herself) in a fiery crash
That should be our message. Even king airs don’t carry much compared to a sprinter van, much less kill or injure ~850 innocents as McVeigh did with a Ford medium duty truck. Or even what the Nashville bomber did with an RV, more recently.