A stolen airline truck driven by a man wearing only boxer shorts crashed into a parked Southwest Airlines jet Thursday night at Omaha’s Eppley Airfield. The incident required multiple police officers to subdue the man plus a replacement B737 for the 113 passengers catching their flight to Las Vegas, the Omaha World-Herald reported. An airline spokesman told the newspaper the truck flattened the jet’s nosegear tires. Also, two crew members had minor bumps to a leg and elbow, possibly from disembarking after the incident, according to the report.
The 35-year-old man parked his pickup truck at the airport at 9:30 p.m. and then stood fully dressed in front of the terminal, screaming that people were trying to kill him, airport police officials said. An officer tried to get the man to calm down but he would have none of it, and ran off. More officers were called to pursue him. The World-Herald, which reported the man was found to have mental health and drug addiction issues, described a wild foot chase in the dark around the terminal area. The man climbed over a barbed wire fence and at some point removed his pants and shirt. He found an idling Southwest Airlines vehicle and drove off in it with police vehicles attempting to stop him before he drove into the jet parked at a boarding gate. Police took the man to a local medical facility and brought in federal agencies including the NTSB to investigate.
