University professor commits suicide by stealing a plane

A British university computer science lecturer stole a small, American-made four-seat Cessna 172 Skyhawk and dumped it in a field in the rural Kent county in southeast England after he learned from his doctor that he was suffering from a stomach problem. In a rare suicide attempt, Dr. Christopher Woollard, 64, began his journey by driving to Rochester Airport. He had been learning to fly in the county since March 2019, Alrabiya.net learned. On Saturday, local media, especially the British newspaper The Times, reported his story, apparently citing Sergeant. Their assigned police officer, Jay Barrett, spent five months investigating and concluded that the plane crash was not caused by a malfunction as they had thought, but was definitely the result of suicide.

What happened is that on the morning of September 10 last year, Woolard agreed to a training exercise with his instructor, who gave him a set of keys and asked him to do a “pre-flight check” on the aircraft as a normal part of the training, so the professor did so, then climbed into the cockpit and flew the aircraft to the runway, then he radioed the operator who was in the control tower at the time and asked to speak to his instructor. While waiting, he suddenly changed. After the flight, he turned off the aircraft’s radio communications and tracking systems, then isolated himself and killed the aircraft.

Investigators later discovered that Woolard had deliberately shot down the plane over an uninhabited area, where they saw the wreckage passing through the field, and discovered that Woolard had given his instructor access to his bank account to pay for the damage to the plane. He was still alive, so he provided him with all the first aid available, but the professor died two hours after his suicide.