Wife of off-duty pilot who ‘tried to turn off engines mid-flight’ breaks silence

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The wife of the off-duty pilot accused of trying to cut off a plane’s engines mid-flight has broken her silence about the shocking incident.

Sarah Stretch briefly spoke to reporters after attending her husband Joseph Emerson’s court appearance in Portland, Oregon, this week.

She said that her husband was struggling with depression at the time as she said she finds it hard to believe he could have acted that way.

“This is not my Joe,” she said, according to CNN.

“This is not any Joe that anybody knows. I don’t know how to explain it, but it just wasn’t him.”

Mr Emerson, a 44-year-old successful pilot with a career spanning two decades, was travelling off-duty in the flight deck jump seat in the cockpit of an Alaska Airlines flight from Seattle to San Fransisco on Sunday.

During the flight, he allegedly tried to shut down both of the plane’s engines by pulling the fire extinguisher handles.

After the captain and first officer intervened to keep the engines running, the flight crew allegedly took him to the back of the plane, put him in wrist restraints.

Mr Emerson then tried to grab the handle of the emergency exit while the flight descended, Alaska Airlines said.

A flight attendant later told police that Mr Emerson said “I messed everything up” and that he had “tried to kill everybody”.

The former pilot is currently facing 167 charges over the incident including 83 counts of first-degree attempted murder, 83 counts of reckless endangerment and one could of endangering an aircraft.

While he has pleaded not guilty to the charges, he reportedly told investigators that he was experiencing a “nervous breakdown” and had taken psychedelic magic mushrooms just two days prior.

Because of the mushrooms, Mr Emerson claims he thought he was dreaming when he pulled the handles, thinking it would wake him up, according to a federal affidavit.

His wife said she believes her husband would never have knowingly tried to compromise the flight.

“He never would’ve done that. He never would’ve knowingly done any of that,” Ms Stretch told reporters, her voice was quivering.

“That is not the man that I married. That’s not the man that all of these people in this world are coming together to support him, love him.”

Ms Stretch said her husband had been experiencing depression recently, saying: “We’ve all been dealing with a lot of pressures in life.”

Around 10 of his family members and friends attended the court hearing on Thursday. His attorney said that some of his coworkers had also come to support him, CNN reports.

Mr Emerson’s attorney Ethan Levi said that the off-duty pilot was not “suicidal nor homicidal” during the incident and “did not intend to harm himself or any other person”.

He to reporters that Mr Emerson was in a “dream-like state” and had not slept for around 40 hours at the time of the incident.

Noah Horst, another of Mr Emerson’s attorneys, told CNN that he was “not under the influence of intoxicants when he boarded the flight”.

Court documents also showed that the pilots and others who encountered him did not think he appeared to be intoxicated.

Mr Levi also cleared up a claim his client had cited in the charging document – that a friend had recently passed away.

The attorney clarified on Thursday that his friend, who was a best man at Mr Emerson’s wedding, had passed away around six years ago.

Alaska Airlines announced on Tuesday that Mr Emerson has been removed from service and is no longer working for the company.