‘Had taken magic mushroom…not slept for…’ says off-duty Alaska Airlines pilot who was charged with attempted murder

livemint.com:

Reuters. Joseph David Emerson, 44, an Alaska Airlines pilot, was riding as a standby employee passenger in the cockpit "jump seat" of Sunday's flight from Everett, Washington, to San Francisco, when the airborne altercation occurred, authorities said.

Emerson ended up being restrained by cabin crew members after a brief altercation with the captain and first officer within the flight deck, and he was arrested in Portland, Oregon, where the flight had been diverted and safely landed. On Tuesday, Emerson was charged in Oregon state court with 83 counts of attempted murder - one for every crew member and passenger on the plane besides himself - and a single count of endangering an aircraft.

He had pleaded not guilty to those charges through his attorney at a brief arraignment hearing on Tuesday in Multnomah County Circuit Court in Portland. Emerson was charged in a separate federal criminal complaint with one count of interfering with flight crew members and attendants.

The charging documents in both cases were filed with sworn affidavits from investigators outlining a harrowing sequence of events that came close to shutting down hydraulic operation and fuel to both engines of the twin-jet aircraft, an Embraer 175. According to the affidavits as seen by Reuters, after his arrest, Emerson told police that he was suffering a mental crisis during the incident and had struggled with depression for the past six months.

The court documents also said he also told police that he had taken "magic mushrooms" for the first time which he had ingested 48 hours before boarding the flight. On Tuesday, Alaska Air Group, the airline's parent company, in a statement said that at no time during the check-in or boarding process did employees