With the FBI now heading up the investigation into the crash of a Civil Air Patrol Cessna 172 into an office building in downtown Anchorage, Alaska, there is mounting evidence that the crash was no accident. According to official preliminary reports, the Skyhawk was piloted by Doug Demarest, an officer in the CAP, though the flight, according to the CAP, was “not authorized.” Demarest died in the crash. No one else was injured.
A family spokesperson later said that the accident was a suicide but (understandably) declined to release details publicly. The pilot’s wife, a prominent Anchorage attorney, works in the building into which Demarest crashed the small aircraft.
There are a handful of known or suspected suicides in light airplanes every year in the United States, almost all of them committed by pilots with no passengers. It is rare but not unknown for there to be casualties on the ground. A 2010 suicide attack on an IRS building in Austin, TX, killed an IRS employee and injured a dozen others.
