This was staggeringly stupid, especially in the six years since 9/11 -- three idiot North Carolina teen-agers in a rented plane buzzing a football game near Charlotte.I keep wondering, in an age where we're constantly fretting over the moronic things adolescents do to get themselves and others killed in cars, why the hell are we letting them fly planes, contraptions that would allow someone as stupid as this 17-year-old pilot to do some real damage?
I shake my head. I imagine the Charlotte Observer reporter was shaking his head, too:
I MEAN, good God Almighty! These young fools are lucky no one got rattled enough about a potential terrorist attack that he tried shoot that plane down with whatever firearms happened to be handy.A 17-year-old Hopewell High student was apparently acting on a dare when he did a fly-over prank at a Hopewell High football game Friday, at one point dipping below the stadium lights.
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools officials said Sunday that the teen pilot and two teen passengers flew the length of the field three times around 8 p.m. The plane reportedly came within feet of a flag pole.
On the final pass, a pair of tennis shoes and a football dropped from the single-engine Cessna 172 into the end zone, officials said.
The pilot, who apparently broke multiple federal aviation laws, is being investigated by the Federal Aviation Administration, Huntersville police and CMS.
“My immediate reaction was that we were going to have a terrorist act of some sort,” said Vincent “Bud” Cesena, head of CMS law enforcement, who was among the 4,000 people in the stands.
“Then, as he circled, you saw that it was kids in the plane, and I was hoping it that it was just some kind of prank. I was thinking to myself: ‘Should I empty the stands and risk someone being trampled or see what happens?’ I knew for sure someone would get hurt if I emptied the stands.”
Witnesses say the plane came within 75 feet of an embankment at the field at the school on Beatties Ford Road in Huntersville.
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