Plane safely lands after pilot threatened to crash into Mississippi Walmart

A pilot who threatened to crash into a Walmart in Tupelo, Mississippi, on Saturday morning, then flew erratically for several hours, was taken into custody after landing in a field, officials said.

The plane landed in Benton County, about 50 miles northwest of Tupelo, and the pilot was taken into custody without injury, said Connie Strickland, a dispatcher for the Benton County Sheriff’s Department in Mississippi. She did not identify the pilot.

The Federal Aviation Administration said a Beechcraft King Air 90 landed in a field after taking off from Tupelo Regional Airport and circling the area. The FAA said only the pilot was in the plane. The agency said it was co-ordinating with local law enforcement agencies and would investigate the flight.

Around 12:30pm (6:30am local time), officials in Mississippi warned residents to be on alert after the pilot threatened to intentionally crash into a Walmart in Tupelo and continued to fly above and around the city.

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The Tupelo Police Department said on Facebook that it had been contacted about the pilot around 5am. The police said that the Walmart and other nearby stores had been evacuated and that the police had been talking directly with the pilot. At 8:30am, the police said the plane was north of Tupelo.

Officials said the local, state and federal authorities were “continuing to monitor this dangerous situation.”

“Thankful the situation has been resolved and that no one was injured,” governor Tate Reeves said on Twitter.

On the flight-tracking website, FlightAware, a twin-turboprop Beechcraft King Air plane appeared Saturday morning to be flying erratically over Tupelo and then about 40 miles northwest in Benton and Union counties in Mississippi before it landed around 0:07am in Benton County.

During the flight, the plane flew between 900 and 2,000 feet elevation, turning in circles and veering in different directions, according to the website. This article originally appeared in The New York Times.