A Florida mailman delivered a bizarre message to DC lawmakers by landing his tiny gyrocopter on the West Lawn of the US Capitol, prompting a temporary lockdown, according to reports.
The looney aviator – who was promptly arrested by Capitol Police – was not immediately identified by authorities. But the Tampa Bay Times said it was Doug Hughes, 61, a Ruskin native who had been planning a protest flight that would violate the highly protected airspace.
Last spring, Secret Service agents accompanied a Hillsborough County sheriff’s deputy to Hughes’ home, the paper reported. He was asked about his plan to save America.
He admitted owning the chopper, which he kept at a small airport in Wauchula, and had planned of doing something to raise awareness of campaign finance reform – but was not planning on going postal by crashing into buildings or monuments in DC, the report said.
He set up a Web site where he announced his mission to DC and even had a live stream of the wacky flight.
“Let me say first – this is a non-violent demonstration. I have no intention of hurting anyone – I have taken every precaution to prevent any injury to anyone, including me,” he wrote on the site, thedemocracyclub.org.
“There is no way I can prevent over-reaction by the authorities, but I have given them as much information and advance warning as my fuel supply allows. When I took off, I was over an hour away from the no-fly zone.”
He wrote that his demonstration was about “restoring democracy.”
“Corruption in Washington DC has robbed the US citizens of the representative government that is our birthright,” he wrote. “Polls show that the public is aware of the problem and VERY concerned, but they are largely uninformed that there is a solution and there are organizations prepared to make reform a reality.”
He hoped two things would happen as a result of his aerial stunt: honest government – when “voters are going to quit being played like suckers with divisive hot-button issues” – and for every congressional candidate in 2016 to “take a stand on corruption.”
Hughes described himself as a mailman in Riverview, Fla., who flew with his dad and has been flying gyrocopters for more than a year. He wrote that he served as a Navy electrician aboard an aircraft carrier, the USS Enterprise.
“The Navy taught me a lot about leadership, mostly how it shouldn’t be done,” he wrote.
House Homeland Security panel Chairman Michael McCaul, R-Texas, said that had the pilot made it much closer to the Capitol, authorities were prepared to shoot him down.
The gyrocopter – which features an unpowered rotor to generate lift and an engine-powered propeller – presented an almost comical sight as it sat with its rotor spinning slowly.
Emergency vehicles responded to the area and a robot bomb detector crawled over to investigate the contraption.
The security scare came after a man shot himself dead in front of the Capitol on Saturday and sparked a temporary lockdown.
With Post Wires