"I'm finally ready to stop this insanity."
According to The Washington Post, that's what A. Joseph Stack wrote on a website before setting his house on fire and flying his biplane into Austin's IRS building. He was fed up with how the IRS had dealt with him, so he got into a plane and flew it into a federal building.
A purported suicide note left on a Web site registered to software engineer Joe Stack of San Marcos, Tex., spoke of a "storm raging in my head" and said that "desperate times call for desperate measures."
In the self-described "rant," the writer railed about financial failures over two decades and run-ins with the IRS and his tax accountant. "I am finally ready to stop this insanity," he wrote near the end of the message. "Well, Mr. Big Brother IRS man, let's try something different; take my pound of flesh and sleep well." The posting, dated Thursday, was signed: "Joe Stack (1956-2010)."
Austin Police Chief Art Acevedo said that Stack set fire to his house before taking off in his plane and that investigators were trying to determine whether he carried accelerants on board in addition to the Piper's fuel.
Asked why casualties apparently were much lower than initially feared, Acevedo said: "I think we were very fortunate. . . . Some folks might have seen this aircraft coming and yelled out some warnings, and I believe there were some heroic actions this morning on the part of federal employees."
Sigh. If only this guy's name was Muhammed. This story would just kinda write itself.
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