Yavuz Berke and Adam Leon

Adam Leon, the man formerly known as Yavuz Berke, stole a small Cessna 172 aircraft from a Canadian flight school and freaked out a lot of people.

From CNN:

The pilot of a small Cessna 172 aircraft reported stolen from a Canadian flight school has been captured, authorities said.

The pilot reportedly stole a small Cessna 172 aircraft from a Canadian flight school, flew hundreds of miles across the Midwest, landed on a dirt road in Missouri late Monday and took off on foot, federal officials said.

This is what you call very suspicious activity.

Federal, state and local authorities launched a manhunt for the pilot, who was identified by the FBI as Adam Leon, 31, a native of Turkey who became a Canadian citizen last year, according to FBI spokesman Richard Kolko. He was formerly known as Yavuz Berke, though officials did not indicate a reason for the name change.

He was taken into custody at an Ellsinore grocery story after a brief manhunt, according to Missouri state police and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

A federal law enforcement source said the pilot parked the plane under what appeared to be a bridge or culvert, apparently in an attempt to hide it.

The plane had been intercepted and tracked by U.S. military aircraft as it flew from Canada into U.S. airspace and meandered southward for several hours before landing, a Department of Homeland Security spokesman said.

It landed in the town of Ellsinore, population 360, in southern Missouri, a dispatcher with the Carter County Sheriff's Office said.

A spokesman for the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) said the pilot flew "erratically" over the course of the afternoon, at time reaching 14,000 feet in altitude, then dropping as low as 3,000 feet.

The Cessna departed the school in Ontario at about 3 p.m. ET and flew over Lake Superior less than half an hour later, according to NORAD officials. F-16 fighter jets intercepted the pilot near Michigan's upper peninsula border with Wisconsin at 4:43 p.m., and tracked the Cessna until its safe landing.

The NORAD spokesman, Mike Kucharek, said military pilots who intercepted the Cessna had tried repeatedly to get the pilot's attention and at one point, the pilot appeared to acknowledge that he saw the other aircraft.

"He looked at them," Kucharek said.

But the pilot had not communicated with NORAD or the Federal Aviation Administration, Kucharek added later in the evening. At 9:20 p.m., the pilot was believed to have had roughly 30 minutes of fuel left, Kucharek said.

...Officials allowed the pilot "to play his hand" because they "[didn't] want to provoke the situation," Kucharek said.

A federal law enforcement official told CNN the pilot is a naturalized Canadian citizen, but declined to give his name or country of origin. The source said the pilot was a flight school student for a "brief" period and only clocked a few hours of flight time.

Canadian officials have received some information that the pilot is "not a happy individual," the official said.

Berke/Leon is "not a happy individual"?

I'm not happy either.

It makes for a stressful evening when you've got a nutjob in a stolen plane flying over your state.

From ABC:

Berke was apparently treated for depression last Friday and left his girlfriend a good-bye note, Canadian officials told the U.S. government. Berke's vehicle was left at the airport in Canada with the keys still in it.

...Confederation College in Thunder Bay, Ontario, confirmed to ABC News that one of its aircraft was stolen today and flown out of Thunder Bay International Airport at 2:55 p.m.

A college official told a local newspaper that it was believed the pilot was not a student at the school.

"Apparently, somebody jumped over the fence and just jumped into an aircraft," Judi Maundrell, the college's vice president of academics and student services, told the Thunder Bay News Source. "It was sitting as usual parked on the ramp. They keys are in all the aircrafts because students are using them."

So Berke was depressed.

If you steal a plane, chances are you're probably going through a bit of a rocky time.

I don't think it's a good idea to have the keys in all the planes. Obviously, there's an inexcusable lack of control with that practice. The security was unbelivably lax.

"NORAD pilots, once authorized by higher authority, are authorized to use everything within their power to protect U.S. citizens, up to and including lethal force," [NORAD spokesman Michael Kucharek] said.

Kucharek said it costs roughly $50,000 per hour/per jet to scramble F-16s. From the time the plane was initially intercepted over Lake Superior near the Michigan upper peninsula until it landed on the Missouri highway, it was followed by two F-16s for more than five hours -- a likely tab of $500,000.

Berke is lucky to be alive.

I wonder what his good-bye note was about. Did he tell his girlfriend he was on his way to the U.S.? Maybe Berke wanted to leave Canada because the health care system sucks.

If he wanted to kill himself, he certainly wouldn't have landed the plane and fled on foot.

I doubt that he planned to carry out a terrorist attack, or "man-caused disaster," according to Janet Napolitano.

Apparently, Berke made no hostile moves that would have prompted the F-16 pilots to take him out.

Berke was careful, but he is really stupid. When our fighter jets intercepted the plane, he had to know there was no way for him to escape. It was over. I don't know why he kept the plane in the air for so long.

His stunt may have cost taxpayers half a million dollars.

I hope he pays a heavy price for what he did.



More video.

TMJ4

FOX 6
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UPDATE: Yavuz Berke/Adam Leon claims he wanted to commit suicide, but didn't have the courage to do it.