An off-duty pilot facing 83 charges of attempted murder after allegedly trying to shut down the engines of an Alaska Airlines aircraft mid-flight had taken “magic mushrooms” about 48 hours before the incident, court documents revealed.
Joseph Emerson, 44, was arrested on Sunday after flight attendants placed him in wrist restraints and seated him in the rear of the aircraft.
After his arrest, he told police that he had taken psychedelic mushrooms for the first time and had been depressed for six months, according to an FBI affidavit. He also claimed that he was having a nervous breakdown at the time and had not slept for 40 hours.
Emerson, of Pleasant Hill, California, was sitting in the jump seat of the Horizon Air plane when he allegedly tried to shut the engines down during a flight from Everett, Washington, to San Francisco. It had to be diverted to Portland, Oregon.
According to court documents, Port of Portland police officers responded to a report of an inbound aircraft that had been diverted due to an inflight disturbance.
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The US attorney’s office in Oregon said that he was charged in a federal criminal complaint on Tuesday with interfering with flight crew members and attendants.
Emerson was separately charged in Oregon state court with 83 counts of attempted murder and a single count of endangering an aircraft.
“I messed everything up,” he said, according to the criminal complaint, adding that he allegedly “tried to kill everybody”.
After the alleged attempt to disable the engines, Emerson — in wrist restraints — was alleged to have tried to grab the handle of an emergency exit during the flight’s descent, but was stopped by a flight attendant.
He allegedly told crew: “You need to cuff me right now or it’s going to be bad.”
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“I pulled both emergency shutoff handles because I thought I was dreaming and I just wanna wake up,” Emerson said, according to court documents.
He had been travelling as a passenger in the cockpit of the plane. This is a routine mode of transport for commercial pilots taking flights home or to their next assignment, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.
Alaska Airlines, which owns Horizon Air, said that at no time during the check-in or boarding process did employees observe any signs of impairment that would have led them to prevent Emerson from flying.
The attorney’s office said that Emerson remains in custody in Multnomah County pending his first appearance in federal court at a later date.
