The wife of Joseph D. Emerson, the off-duty pilot accused of attempting to shut down the engines of Horizon Air flight 2059 over Oregon, said Thursday that her husband “never would have knowingly” tried to harm himself or others on the plane.
“This is not my Joe. This is not any Joe that anybody knows,” said his wife, Sarah Stretch, after she got her first close-up, unobstructed view of him in federal court. “I can’t explain it but it just wasn’t him.”
Stretch spoke out briefly after she, Emerson’s parents, his father-in-law, other family members and Alaska Airlines co-workers attended Emerson’s first appearance in U.S. District Court in Portland.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Youlee Yim You ordered Emerson to be held as a danger and risk of flight on the charge of interfering with flight crew members and attendants, pending his next court appearance Nov. 22.
“This is a complete shock to everyone,” said Emerson’s lawyer, Ethan Levi, after the hearing.
Levi said Emerson wanted to thank the flight crew for their “timely and heroic actions” and the flight attendants for their kindness.
“Mr. Emerson did not intend to harm himself or any other person,” Levi said. “He was not suicidal or homicidal.”
He noted Emerson, 44, told investigators that he felt he was in a “dreamlike state.”
Emerson, who was riding in the cockpit’s jump seat, admitted to pulling two red emergency handles that would have shut off fuel to the plane’s engines “because I thought I was dreaming and I just wanna wake up,” according to a federal affidavit.
On the plane, Emerson told one of the flight attendants that “he had ‘messed everything up’ and ‘tried to kill everybody,’” and wouldn’t answer when an investigator asked him if he was trying to kill himself, according to a state affidavit.
He also told police that he was “mentally ... in crisis” during Sunday’s flight, according to an amended federal complaint filed Thursday.
He told Port of Portland police after his arrest that he was depressed by the death of his best friend, which occurred six years ago. The friend was best man at the couple’s wedding, Stretch said.
Emerson said he hadn’t slept in 40 hours and had taken psychedelic mushrooms for the first time two days before the flight, which would have been last Friday, according to court records. He didn’t appear intoxicated upon arrest, police wrote in the records.
Levi said he hopes the case will be consolidated in one court, and not pursued in both federal and state courts. Emerson was arraigned on Tuesday afternoon in Multnomah County Circuit Court, accused of 83 counts of attempted murder and reckless endangerment in the case.
Levi also intends to argue at a future hearing for Emerson’s release.
“He’s not only safe. He’s not a flight risk,” Levi told the judge, but Levi didn’t immediately contest Emerson’s continued detention Thursday.
Emerson, wearing blue jail scrubs, turned toward his family sitting behind him in the public gallery and whispered, “I love you,” when he was brought into the courtroom. One family member reached toward him to do a fist bump in the air.
Sunday’s flight originated in Everett, Washington, and was bound for San Francisco. It was diverted to Portland after Emerson threw his headset across the cockpit, declared “I’m not okay” and tried to reach up and pull the emergency handles marked “EXTG” to shut off the plane’s engines, according to court records.
The pilot grabbed Emerson’s wrist and wrestled with him for about 25 to 30 seconds, while the co-pilot declared an emergency, turned the plane’s autopilot off and flew to Portland.
Emerson left the cockpit and calmly walked to the back of the plane, according to an amended federal affidavit.
“Emerson was observed peacefully walking to the back of the aircraft,” where he told one attendant that he “just got kicked out of the flight deck,” the affidavit said.
“I need you to cuff me before I do something wrong, it’s going to be bad,” he told the attendant, who then placed flex cuffs on him, the affidavit said.
While the plane continued to descend, Emerson turned toward an emergency exit door and tried to grab the handle. An attendant stopped him by placing her hands on top of his, continued to talk to him to further “distract him from trying to grab the emergency exit handle again” and secured him with a seat harness in an attendant’s seat in the back of the aircraft, the affidavit said.
Once the plane landed shortly after 6 p.m., Port of Portland police boarded the plane and took Emerson into custody.
Emerson, who lives in Pleasant Hill, California, has been a pilot since 2001. He had been authorized to hitch a ride in a jump seat in the cockpit of the flight. Court records noted that he was “flying stand-by.”
Alaska Airlines said he was a pilot for the Seattle-based company, which also owns regional commuter Horizon Air. In a statement Tuesday, Alaska said Horizon gate agents and flight crew are trained to recognize impairment and none of them identified any signs that would have led them to prevent Emerson from flying Sunday.
Emerson’s wife said she was able to speak with her husband on Wednesday. Levi said of Emerson, “he’s doing way better” now, compared to his state of mind on the flight. He declined comment on Emerson’s alleged use of mushrooms.
Stretch stressed that Emerson “never would have would have knowingly” harmed anyone.
“It’s not the man that I married — a man that all of these people in this world are coming together to support him and love him, no,” she said, as family and friends gathered around her.
Emerson also is being held without bail on the state charges. He’s in custody at the Multnomah County Detention Center.
