Surveillance Video Shows Stolen Jet Crashing Through Parking Lot 4 Months Ago
ST. GEORGE, Utah (CBS4) - Newly released surveillance video from an airport in Utah shows what happened in July when a Colorado pilot jumped a perimeter fence and drove a commercial jet into a parking lot.
Brian Hedglin, 40, was a SkyWest pilot who was wanted for the murder of his girlfriend Christina Cornejo, 39, in Colorado Springs. Cornejo was stabbed to death a few days before the Utah incident.
Hedglin managed to start the plane but would only be alive for a few more minutes.
The surveillance video from the St. George Municipal Airport that was released this week shows in detail what happened that wild night in July.
Just after midnight Hedglin showed up at the airport. After using his motorcycle and a rug to scale the barbed-wire fence surveillance video showed him walking towards the CRJ200 Delta jet, which was operated by SkyWest Airlines.
Once in the cockpit Hedglin backed away from the terminal. But if he was really planning to fly off in the plane, he made a big mistake by clipping the passenger jetway with one of the wings. That left the plane unfit to fly.
Six minutes after entering airport property Hedgelin crashed the plane through a fence. That took out some light-posts and smashed cars before the front landing gear collapsed in the middle of the parking lot.
The jet's engines continued to roar as police waited for a Skywest employee to arrive to open the plane. Officers then found Hedglin dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
The video, plus new pictures taken by investigators, were released as part of an open records request.
KUTV in Salt Lake City reported that the black box recording on the plane didn't pick up any words from Hedglin, only "heavy breathing and some rustling in the cockpit that investigators assume to be from Hedglin."
