Pilot’s Wife Apologizes As Plane Crash Investigation Continues

AUSTIN, Tex. -Homeland Security, police and fire crews are sifting through the debris at an Austin, Texas, office building where a man with a grudge against the government crashed his small plane yesterday.

Joseph Stack and at least one worker were killed. In an online posting, Stack accused the Internal Revenue Service of robbing him of his savings.

Stack’s father-in-law tells The New York Times he knew Stack had a “hang-up” with the IRS and that his marriage was strained. The newspaper says Stack’s wife took her daughter to a hotel to get away from him on Wednesday night.

Joseph Stack’s wife released a statement regarding Thursday morning’s plane crash into the Austin IRS building, which killed an IRS employee:

Sheryl Stack released the statement through someone she hired, Rayford Walker – who passed out paper copies to the media outside a house near the one authorities said her husband torched just before crashing his plane into the Northwest Austin IRS building.

The pilot apparently had a grudge against the IRS and crashed his plane into the agency’s office building, engulfing the four-story building in flames in an apparent suicide. The act was meant to call attention to what he viewed as the tax agency’s failings.

Stack died in his Cherokee Piper PA-28 airplane when it struck Building I in the Echelon complex on Mopac and U.S. 183 around 10 a.m. – about 45 minutes after authorities said he set fire to his Northwest Austin home.