The 2010 Austin suicide attack occurred on February 18, 2010, when Andrew Joseph Stack III deliberately crashed his single-engine Piper Dakota light aircraft into Building I of the Echelon office complex in Austin, Texas, United States,[5] killing himself and Internal Revenue Service (IRS) manager Vernon Hunter.[6] Thirteen others were injured, two severely. The four-story[7][8] office building housed an IRS field office occupying the top three floors, along with a couple of private businesses on the first floor. Prior to the crash, Stack had posted a suicide note to his web site, expressing his disillusionment with corporations and government agencies such as the IRS. Stack is also suspected of having set fire that morning to his two-story North Austin house, which was mostly destroyed.
About an hour before the crash, Stack allegedly set fire to his $230,000[17] house located on Dapplegrey Lane in North Austin.[10][19] He then drove to a hangar he rented at Georgetown Municipal Airport, approximately 20 miles to the north.[20] He boarded his single-engine Piper Dakota airplane and took off around 9:45 a.m. Central Standard Time.[21][22][23][24] He indicated to the control tower his flight would be "going southbound, sir."[13] After taking off, his last words were "thanks for your help, have a great day."[25]
About ten minutes later, his plane descended and collided at full speed with Echelon I, a building containing offices for 190 IRS employees, resulting in a large fireball and explosion.[21][26][27] The building is located near the intersection of Research Boulevard (U.S. Route 183) and Mopac Expressway (Loop 1).
On the morning of the crash, Stack posted a suicide note on his website, embeddedart.com.[12][28][29][30][31] The HTML source code of the web page shows the letter was composed using Microsoft Word starting two days prior, February 16, at 19:24Z (1:24 p.m. CST).[32] The document also shows that it was saved 27 times with the last being February 18 at 06:42Z (12:42 a.m. CST).[32]
In the note, he begins by expressing displeasure with the government, the bailout of financial institutions, politicians, the conglomerate companies of General Motors, Enron and Arthur Andersen, unions, drug and health care insurance companies, and the Catholic Church.[31] He then describes his life as an engineer, including his meeting with a poor widow who never got the pension benefits she was promised, the effect of the Section 1706 of Tax Reform Act of 1986 on independent contractor engineers, the September 11 attacks, airline bailouts that benefited only the airlines but not the suffering engineers, and how a CPA he hired seemed to side with the government to take extra tax money from him.
The note also mentions Stack's having issues with taxes, debt, and the IRS and his having a long-running feud with the organization.[33] While the IRS also has a larger regional office in Austin, the field office located in Echelon I performed tax audits, seizures, investigations and collections.[33]
The note ended with:
I saw it written once that the definition of insanity is repeating the same process over and over and expecting the outcome to suddenly be different. I am finally ready to stop this insanity. Well, Mr. Big Brother IRS man, let's try something different; take my pound of flesh and sleep well.
The communist creed: From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.
The capitalist creed: From each according to his gullibility, to each according to his greed.
— Joe Stack (1956-2010)
