Pilot arrested after small aircraft lands near Capitol

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[h=4]Pilot arrested after small aircraft lands near Capitol[/h]U.S. Capitol Police arrested a man for flying a small aircraft near the Capitol grounds on Wednesday afternoon. The Capitol went on lockdown around 1:30 p.m. when the pilot landed the aircraft.

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Police arrested a man who steered his tiny, one-person helicopter onto the West Lawn of the U.S. Capitol Wednesday, astonishing spring tourists and prompting a temporary lockdown of the Capitol Visitor Center. (April 15) AP


A gyrocopter landed on the west lawn of the U.S. Capitol in Washington on April 15, 2015. Police have arrested the pilot.(Photo: Michael Reynolds, European Pressphoto Agency)


U.S. Capitol Police arrested a man for flying a small aircraft near the Capitol grounds on Wednesday afternoon.
The Capitol went on lockdown around 1:30 p.m. when the pilot landed the aircraft, which fits only one person, on the West Lawn. No one was hurt and the lockdown has been lifted.
Police have not explained how the chopper got around security. The area around the Capitol is a no-fly zone. Charges are pending.
A bomb squad found nothing hazardous on the aircraft and police would not release additional information available about the pilot.
The Tampa Bay Times reported that a Florida man planned to land the one-man chopper on the Capitol grounds as a non-violent act of civil disobedience. The newspaper identified the man as Doug Hughes, 61, a mail carrier and father of four.
The newspaper said Hughes contacted a reporter there in case he was shot down or killed by police as he tried to land. He told the paper he planned on landing his aircraft near the Capitol to call attention to the need for campaign reform.
He said he had with him 535 letters that he wanted to deliver to each member of Congress, detailing his complaints.
"There's no question that we need government, but we don't have to accept that it's a corrupt government that sells out to the highest bidder," he told the newspaper. "We can have a government that works for the people, that answers to the people, that can only take money from the people in small amounts."
The paper said it called the U.S. Secret Service in Washington, D.C., to see if they were aware of Hughes' flight plans. Public information officers told the paper they did not know and referred them to the Capitol Police, which did not respond.
On a website called The Democracy Club, identified by the Tampa Bay Times as the site Hughes built in advance of his flight, he wrote, "My flight is not a secret. Before I took off, I sent an email to [email protected]. The letter is intended to persuade the guardians of the Capitol that I am not a threat and that shooting me down will be a bigger headache than letting me deliver these letters to Congress."
He says on the website that the point of the flight is to call attention to and provide solutions to corruption in D.C.
Hughes says he and a friend wrote a document called "The Civilist Papers," which calls for free and fair elections without fraud, ending the control of special interests and lobbyists, campaign finance reform and the end of "profiteering by Congress while in office."
The friend, Mike Shanahan, who works with Hughes as a mail carrier in the Tampa area, told CNN that Hughes is not dangerous. Shanahan said the flight was meant to send a message about the need for reform in elections.
"He has no weapons or anything else," Shanahan said. "I know him personally. He's like a pitbull when he has an idea. He wants to wake up the country.
"He's upset that politicians can be bought and sold at auction, and I agree with him," Shanahan told the news channel.
Shanahan told the Tampa Bay Times that he called a Secret Service agent to notify him of the possibility of the flight.
The newspaper reported that both Hughes and Shanahan were questioned by a Secret Service agent last spring about their ideas to "save America." Hughes told the newspaper that he told the agent he owned a gyrocopter and that he had talked of doing "something big to bring attention to the issue," but that he was not planning on crashing into any buildings or monuments in the nation's capitol.
Contributing: Erin Kelly
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