Feb 182010
 
Plane crash at 183 and Mopac

Photo by co-worker friend Jay Harrison via Facebook

Like me, you’re probably getting most of your news updates via Twitter, Facebook or other social media, but a small plane crashed into an office building near Mopac and 183 this morning around 9:50am. A co-worker came in breathless having seen the whole thing as it happened. In retrospect, we felt the shock wave a few blocks away.

Initial reports are that it was the Echelon building and may have housed IRS, FBI and St. Edward’s University employees. I’ve also seen that all but two people have been accounted for from the building and that the plane may have been out of Waco and went full throttle into the building.

Of course, this is all pure speculation at this point since it’s so soon. More as it develops.

Update: Follow the Austin American-Statesman twitter account for the latest.

Update 2: Statesman blog post now has quotes from aforementioned co-worker.

Update 3: Note left by the plane’s pilot, Joe Stack. He was clearly targeting the IRS criminal investigation division. We’re lucky he didn’t decide to target the much bigger and more populous regional service center a few miles away.

Update 4: Stack was an Austin resident and set fire to his house just before getting the plane. There was a report on the Statesman’s Blotter blog at 9:42 about the fire. A quick check of tax appraisal roll confirms that it’s an address owned by Mr. Stack. It’s a house not very far to the north of the site where he crashed the plane.

Update 5: T35 Hosting has taken down Stack’s company web site (he was an embedded systems programmer) and his manifesto. I, like a lot of other people, kept my own copy. You can probably still get to it at the Internet Archive. The markup indicates he wrote it in Microsoft Word which conveniently records the create and last update times. He created it on 02.16.10 at 7:24PM and went through 27 revisions with the final one this morning at 6:24AM. Here’s the City of Austin’s info page in the incident (what’s up with that URL?).

 Posted by on February 18, 2010 at 11:05 am

  2 Responses to “Plane Crash at 183 and Mopac”

  1. I think a lot of people in this country feel the same way..
    our government is Out of Control

  2. I just finished reading Joe’s letter. Another American at wits end, trying to make sense of all that’s happening in the this country. Educated, entrapenureal, trying to make it and took it to the limit to be heard, expecting change but taking his place among those that die willing, hoping to make a difference in a world that is all about big business. I grieve for his wife and his life. I don’t condone him almost killing people, but his statement was strong and needs to be heard.

 Leave a Reply

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

(required)

(required)

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.