A Los Angeles man is behind bars after police say he stole an airplane from a flight school before crashing it into a nearby hangar shortly after getting airborne.
Authorities identified the suspect as 37-year-old Ceffareno Michael Logan. He allegedly entered Van Nuys Airport Thursday morning around 5 am, reports ABC Los Angeles.
“LAXPD immediately responded and took [the] subject into custody,” police told ABC7 in a statement.
The plane was a Cessna 172, which is an American four-seat, single-engine, high-wing aircraft.
Owner of the L.A. Flight Academy, Anthony Nercessian, told KTLA that the suspect managed to get on the airport ground, broke into the hangar, started the aircraft’s engine before it began to roll away in an attempt to fly.
Nercessian said the man managed to go about 50 to 60 feet before slamming into the hangar. This caused extensive damage to the plane, the hangar, and damaged a Porsche in the process.
“He fled, but I heard he got caught,” Nercessian said.
Logan was not injured and is not known to Nercessian. Police arrested the man and booked him on charges of burglary and theft of an aircraft.
Bail was set at $150,000.
Los Angeles Airport Police and the FBI continue to investigate the situation.
Earlier this year, also in California, a man found that someone had been stealing his plane and taking it for joyrides before returning it in the morning.
Jason Hong, 75, owns a 1958 Cessna Skyhawk and told The Los Angeles Times in August that he visited the plane on July 27 to find it was not in its hangar at Corona Municipal Airport, just east of Anaheim.
“I got confused,” he told the paper. “I thought, ‘did I park it somewhere else, did the airport manager move it?’ But I looked all over.”
Hong eventually learned that, on at least two occasions, an unknown pilot had been flying it across Southern California, but neither he nor the police could figure out who stole the plane.
