Taken For A Ride
After allegedly taking an unlocked $7 million Citation VII from St. Augustine, Fla., where he’d landed earlier as the co-pilot on a charter flight, police say 22-year-old Daniel Andrew Wolcott, a commercial pilot with multi-engine and instrument ratings, flew to Briscoe Field, near Gwinnett, Ga.. There he got on the phone to his friends and five of them arrived for the next part of the journey. Wolcott flew them to Winder, about 15 miles away, did a touch and go and returned to Briscoe, landing with about 500 pounds of fuel on board, according to a report in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The next morning, Wolcott took a commercial flight to Jacksonville, hopped a cab to the St. Augustine Airport and assumed the right seat for the return trip of the charter. “My homeboy chartered this jet,” said Nathaniel Baker, one of five buddies Wolcott is alleged to have called early last Sunday morning to come for a ride in the borrowed aircraft. “He chartered us a jet and we flew.” However, the chain of events may suggest Wolcott instead shimmied up a 14-foot pole at St. Augustine and removed a webcam on the field at the airport and then absconded with the jet. Although the camera theft may be entirely coincidental and unrelated to Wolcott’s alleged adventure, airport assistant manager Bryan Cooper told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution someone “took the camera” between midnight and 5 a.m. (Officials believe the jet was stolen around 3 a.m.) Camera aside, the jet flew through some of the nation’s busiest airspace around Atlanta without ATC contact and with the transponder turned off. “He was flying the plane and letting the boys enjoy themselves,” James Coffey, father of passenger Michael Coffey, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
