The pilot who allegedly tried to crash an Alaska Airlines commuter plane while over Portland told the pilots who overpowered him that he “was not OK.” He later admitted to FBI agents that he took “magic mushrooms” for the first time about two days before he tried to crash the plane with 83 souls on board. This is the same drug that psychedelic aficionados have been falling all over themselves to decriminalize all over the country.
But fans of using psilocybin, the active ingredient in these “magic mushrooms,” say there’s no way the pilot would have turned violent and tried to murder passengers as they rode the Horizon Air Embraer 175 from Everett to San Francisco Sunday afternoon.
Well, let’s see what the 44-year-old grown-a**ed pilot told the FBI and Multnomah County, Ore., Sheriff’s deputies when they sent a welcome party for him after the plane made an emergency landing in Portland.
Court documents say Joseph David Emerson, 44, of Pleasant Hill, Calif., willingly gave a statement to authorities without an attorney present. Perhaps one can attribute that dumb decision to the drugs.
I didn’t feel okay. It seemed like the pilots weren’t paying attention to what was going on. They didn’t… it didn’t seem right… Yah… I pulled both emergency shut-off handles because I thought I was dreaming and I just wanna wake up.
According to people knowledgeable about the Embraer 175, pulling the emergency shut-off handles would kill the engines.
Court docs also say that he tried to open an emergency exit. KIRO-TV reports:
A flight attendant quickly stopped Emerson and tried to talk with him to distract him from grabbing the exit door’s handle again, say court documents.
Another flight attendant told police that she overheard Emerson say “I messed everything up,” and that “he tried to kill everybody.”
The court documents add that the flight attendant also noticed Emerson texting on his phone, and heard him say he “had just put 84 people’s lives at risk tonight including his own.”
Emerson also told cops that he’d had a “nervous breakdown and had not slept in 40 hours.”
So which was it, a psychotic break, the ‘shrooms, or anger against the Alaska/Horizon? We may never know, but the people who know — not me — tell me that magic mushrooms “do not make you want to slaughter people. I’m not sure I’m buying this guy’s [story]. His Twitter is full of pro-airline workers’ rallies from 2022. I’m wondering if he is a disgruntled employee.”
Indeed, as I reported earlier, his Twitter/X timeline is full of union activities and appeals to Congress during the pandemic.
I turned to Reddit to find a ‘shroom group commenting on the story. One person said, “it feels to me like he’s using them as an excuse. I do think he probably has a mental health problem but I’m not convinced one dose of shrooms 48 hours before causes a person to try to crash a plane.” Another said, “48 hours staying awake is more dangerous than a bit of mushrooms.”
Fans of the drug say they use it to treat PTSD, eating disorders, and a host of other issues. Not to be Debbie Downer, but this is also what we were told about how great weed is and that it should be legalized, and then were rewarded with hallucinogenic episodes (Michael Brown in Ferguson), high drivers, and people with no ambition.
The airline industry requires pilots to “renew their medical certificates regularly — annually for those younger than 40 and every six months for those older,” according to Health News Florida. It’s basically a self-reporting honor system. If they admit they’ve got issues, they could be grounded for a period of time.
Pilots who are on duty, which Emerson was not, are subject to random drug tests that search for “opioids, cocaine, methamphetamine, marijuana, and some other drugs — but not psychedelics,” the publication states.
Colorado legalized psychedelic shrooms. Municipalities in Washington, Michigan, and California, have decriminalized the use of hallucinogenic shrooms. California Gov. Gavin Newsom, purveyor of dumb ideas, shocked most people when he vetoed a bill to legalize psychedelics. The state of Oregon is basically running a “medical marijuana” program with psychedelics.
A neighbor of the arrested pilot in the Bay Area says, “I see Joe all the time working in his garage. I go talk to him. He seems like your typical normal guy.”
One passenger, who could have died at the hands of the “typical normal guy,” says he was “cooperative and you know props to the Alaska crew for keeping everyone calm and kind of out of the loop. We knew we had to emergency land but we didn’t know it was a security threat until about 5 minutes before landing when the pilot came on and said we have to land in Portland.”
Emerson is charged with 83 attempted murder counts among other charges.
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