Cops Meet Couple in ‘Stolen’ Cessna

A San Diego couple was ordered out of their Cessna airplane at gunpoint on 8/28 after federal authorities mistakenly alerted Santa Barbara police that the plane was stolen. The couple had leased the plane from Cessna Aircraft Co. and was filming an instructional video. The four-seat plane, it turns out, was bearing the tail number of a different plane that had been stolen in of Texas years ago, but the number had reportedly been reassigned. A federal agency—called El Paso Intelligence Center, which was initially created under the Drug and Enforcement Administration to stop drug traffic and was then given additional duties to deal with terrorist threats—alerted S.B. authorities, but only realized the mistake after the couple was put in cuffs. The two were released a short time later.