FBI Not Pleased With Plane Prank Pilot, Co-Pilot Held On $30,000 Bond October 30, 2001 FRIENDSWOOD, Texas -- Friendswood police were called to Friendswood Stadium shortly before 5 p.m. Tuesday after they received calls about suspicious packages being dropped from a plane. Two 17-year-olds were allegedly flying the plane over the stadium and dropped rolls of paper towels onto the field, according to a News2Houston report. A junior varsity football game was in progress, and several witnesses called police in a panic in light of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. "I don't think it's funny at all right now," neighbor Dee Dee Race said. "It probably was just an innocent prank but people are nervous." "Some of the girls thought it was a war thing," student Katie McCormack said. McCormack told KPRC TV that she figured it was a prank. However, investigators from the FBI didn't find the joke funny. "It surely appears to be a prank," said Capt. Luke Loeser of the Friendswood Police Department. "In light of what has happened over the last few months, you don't take this lightly." The pilot, Christopher Patrick Cummings, and co-pilot, Kevin Matthew Coker, landed the Cessna 150 airplane at Clover Field and were promptly surrounded by police and taken into custody. Cummings is from Houston, and Coker is from Friendswood. The FBI went to the Friendswood Police Station to question Cummings and Coker. The Federal Aviation Administration is also investigating the case. Cummings and Coker will be charged with deadly conduct, a Class A misdemeanor. They remain in police custody and are each being held on $30,000 bond. Cummings had just received his pilot's license five days ago. ==================== Class A misdemeanor?? What's the penalty for that? These kids are f***in' idiots!! rH
That's what I'm saying! ...granted they did something stupid, but come on!...dropping rolls of toilet paper out of a plane (btw, these kids seem young to be flying, huh?) is hardly deadly conduct....
What in the hell are two 17 year olds doing flying a plane alone over a populated area?!? Jesus H Christmas, the authorities don't appear to have learned a thing since 9/11. If two kids who haven't even graduated high school can do it... My blood just boiled when they let 14 Syrians in for flight training on student visas two weeks ago. This is ridiculous. I am joining the Army, and a division in particular that belongs to CENTCOM, which covers the Middle East. My recruiter warned me that we might well end up in Afghanistan or Iraq, but I think I might actually be safer than you guys are a year from now...
i hope they spend a month in jail and do 80 hours of community service. [q]What in the hell are two 17 year olds doing flying a plane alone over a populated area?!? [/q] aothorities can't monitor every airplane.
Why? I mean, really, WHY??? Why is it so hard to point to a plane and tell the guy who wants to get into it 'No'? It's not like you're just pointing to any car on the street and saying 'You can't drive that'. It's more like pointing to the only damn machine in sight and saying 'We don't want to take the chance that you'll do something bad with that expensive piece of machinery that pays my bills... Why can't we at the very damn least screen people who are going to fly above us? I do not believe that that is impossible. Or even difficult.
Valid question. Every private plane should have something like those ankle-cuffs they use for confining people to homes.
I would have to imagine that purposely dropping objects out of an airplane is breaking the law. At the very least it is littering. What if one of those rolls of paper towels flew into the windshield of a car? It could very easily have caused a traffic fatality. The kid's license should immediately be revoked and they should both face punishment.
Whether they broke a normal law isn't an issue. These idiots pulling a prank like this while we're at war is stupid. Not only are you scaring people (what's to say people didn't panic and cause a riot or something), and it takes a number or important authorities off the job of protecting us all because some idiots decided to play a joke. People just don't get it. This is a war, and every joke that distracts people, scare people, or anything makes the U.S.'s job tougher, and the terrorists job easier.
It was not toilet paper, it was paper towels.......totally different and much more malicious. Well, unless they had dropped used toilet paper. But I digress..... Stupid kids.........
