Adam Dylan Leon, 31, stole a plane from his Thunder Bay college and flew to the U.S. in hopes of getting shot down.PAUL DAVIS
If only Adam Dylan Leon had paid more attention to George Bailey.
After admitting to stealing an airplane from his Thunder Bay college earlier this year and taking it on an attempted suicide flight into the United States, Mr. Leon was sentenced yesterday in St. Louis court to two years in prison.
District Court Judge Charles A. Shaw gave the 31-year-old Canadian a longer term than the recommended sentence because of the terror threat he posed and the significant public cost of tracking his flight.
Mr. Leon had hoped to be shot down and killed, court documents show.
Faced with a case where a depressed man contemplated suicide, Judge Shaw urged Mr. Leon to heed the lessons of the 1946 Frank Capra film, It's a Wonderful Life , in which an angel shows James Stewart's character George Bailey what the lives of his loved ones might have been like without him.
Mr. Shaw said it would be worth Mr. Leon's while to watch the film.
Mr. Leon said he hadn't seen it.
The Canadian had been in custody since the four-seat Cessna 172 training plane was first taken from the Thunder Bay airport on April 6. He flew for more than seven hours over four states before - running low on gas - landing safely on a rural Missouri road. He abandoned the plane under an overpass, hitched a ride to a nearby restaurant and bought a lemon-lime Gatorade while he waited for authorities to arrest him.
The U.S. military says it spent more than $230,000 (U.S.) keeping two F-16 fighter jets on his tail while he flew over such cities as Chicago, St. Louis and Madison, where the Wisconsin governor evacuated the State Capitol building.
The plane was returned in working order to the school a week after the stunt.
Mr. Leon underwent a psychiatric evaluation before being charged. He pleaded guilty to unlawfully transporting a stolen aircraft, illegally importing an aircraft, and illegally entering the United States.
The plot "raised the spectre of fears deeply embedded in the public consciousness since September 11, 2001," U.S. Attorney John Sauer alleged in one court document.
Court heard that Mr. Leon, born Yavuz Berke, had become depressed since a 2002 car crash that killed his parents.
Brady Randus, a young Thunder Bay man who worked with Mr. Leon at a Northern Ontario fly-in fishing camp and attended school with him, wrote the court vouching for the man's character.
"I know Adam to be an honest, trustworthy and dependable friend," he wrote. "My family and I are concerned about Adam's future. The predicament he is in is very shocking to me, and totally out of his character."
With a report from The Associated Press