Small Plane Crashes in Echelon I Building in Austin, Texas, Joseph Andrew Stack Named Leaves Manifesto About Struggles with IRS

URGENT: A small plane has crashed into the Echelon I Building on Mopac and U.S. 183 in northwest Austin, TX., around 10 a.m. Thursday. According KXAN, the collision shook the entire commercial building and the entire front of the structure is gone and on fire. Joseph Andrew Stack, a software engineer, is being named as a possible pilot of the plane. His wife, Sheryl Stack and 12 year old daughter were rescued by neighbors from their burning house at 1817 Dapplegrey in Austin. Stack reportedly lives in Austin and is a registered pilot of a Piper PA 28-236. The news reports are saying that he set the fire at his home and fled the scene before police arrived after being called for a domestic disturbance situation. The plane reportedly took off from Georgetown Municipal Airport at 9:40 a.m., which is a stone's throw from Austin. Investigators are looking into whether there is a connection between Stack and the plane crash. He has flown out of the Georgetown airport in the past.
 
There are four separate fires burning in the seven-story building, located in the 9400 block of Research Boulevard. The entire building from the second to fourth floor is on fire. The Internal Revenue Service, the CIA and the FBI all have offices in that office park, though the FBI building was not hit. Two people from the building are reportedly and they are trying to determine where they are. According to the Statesman, a FBI agent said the plane was out of Waco and that the Federal Aviation Administration officials were en route to the scene.

The fire department is reportedly in a defensive position and have retreated from the building due to instability in the building.The plane is being reported as a Piper Cherokee 140 or a Cirrus SR 22, which is a single-engine four-seat aircraft. (See a photo of the Cirrus SR22). According to CNN,  there are 199 IRS employees who worked in the building.

There is a large presence of law enforcement personnel on the scene. It will be interesting to see if this was a deliberate act to do harm to the people in the building or it was an accident. It seems that the fire is very widespread for such a small plane, unless it had just taken off from the airport and was loaded with fuel. It also depends what it had on board. A manifesto from Joseph Stack has been found, according to KXAN, that is a diatribe against the federal government, the bail-out that aided corporate entities and had a long fight with the IRS, which he said wiped out his retirement savings. There were specific allegations against the tax laws, saying that they were too hard to understand. The reality is that the IRS doesn't write the tax codes, it merely enforces them. I can hear it now, nutjobs like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh will point a finger squarely at the Obama Administration for this man's plight, somehow.  

Click here to read the manifesto purportedly written by Joseph Stack, who founded a software development company named Embedded Art in 1983