A Jordanian man who died in a plane crash in Connecticut has a strange but threadbare connection to a southwest suburb of Chicago, authorities said Wednesday.
The FBI was investigating the fatal crash in Connecticut as a possible terror attack but are now saying it’s likely a suicide. The mayor and police chief of suburban Orland Hills in Illinois are hoping to allay fears after a connection was established between the crash and the suburb.
“To our knowledge the deceased pilot has never been a resident or been in Orland Hills,” Mayor Kyle Hastings said Wednesday.
The dead pilot, identified as 28-year-old Feras Feritekh, had an addressed listed in the Chicago suburb that is owned by a man, also of Jordanian descent, who knew Feritekh’s father and agreed to let Feritekh use the residence as the official address while receiving flight training elsewhere.
A twin-engine private plate was engulfed in flames after, a flight instructor who was on board says, the student pilot crashed intentionally. The two had been arguing, the instructor said, when Feritekh said he no longer wanted to fly the plane.
Feritekh had earned his single-engine pilot’s license in the U.S. a year ago he was in the country on a student visa according to the Orland Hills police chief.
“He would come from Jordan directly to the flight school and his dad continued to make money to pay for his training,” Chief Thomas Scully said. “When he ran out he would go back to Jordan.”
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Feritekh’s name was not in any terror databases.
FBI agents searched his apartment and the offices of the flight academy he attended and the investigation was ongoing, officials said.
