Man pointed lasers at planes flying into Hilton Head, feds say. Now he’s prison bound
Updated: Roger Floyd Hendricks was sentenced to one year and six months in prison after he pleaded guilty to aiming a laser pointer at an aircraft.
A 48-year-old man in Georgia is accused of “aiming a powerful laser” at three commercial airplanes carrying passengers to Savannah-Hilton Head International Airport, according to the Justice Department.
Roger Floyd Hendricks was charged in November with three counts of aiming a laser pointer at an aircraft — a federal crime. He was sentenced Tuesday to 18 months in prison.
“Pointing a laser at an aircraft is not a prank; it’s incredibly dangerous and stupid,” U.S. Attorney Bobby L. Christine said in a news release last year. “The FBI did an outstanding job of locating and stopping this threat to hundreds of Savannah air travelers.”
The Federal Aviation Administration asked for the FBI’s help in February after three different passenger planes flying into the airport were targeted by “green laser strikes,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Georgia said in the release.
FBI agents traced the incidents to Hendricks, who prosecutors said lives roughly 30 minutes north of Savannah in Rincon, Georgia. It wasn’t immediately clear how investigators identified Hendricks as the suspect.
The incidents occurred between November 2019 and January 2020, according to the release.
Prosecutors said Hendricks first pointed a green laser at a Commutair flight carrying up to 50 passengers and crew members from Chicago O’Hare International Airport on Nov. 27.
Less than two weeks later on Dec. 8, Hendricks is accused of striking a Delta flight carrying up to 200 passengers and crew members from Hartsfield International Airport in Atlanta, prosecutors said. He allegedly did it again in January to an approaching NetJets flight from Chicago Midway International Airport carrying up to eight passengers and crew members.
All three airplanes were able to land safely, according to the release.
Studies by scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the University of Maryland have shown green laser pointers — particularly the cheap ones that look like a ballpoint pen — “can emit dangerous levels of infrared radiation,” MIT Technology Review reported in 2010.
The “powerful beam of light” emitted by those lasers can travel more than a mile, according to the FBI. When aimed at the cockpit of an airplane, they can also temporarily blind pilots.
“Those who have experienced such attacks have described them as the equivalent of a camera flash going off in a pitch black car at night,” the FBI’s website states.
There were more than 6,000 incidents involving laser strikes on airplanes in the U.S. over the last year, according to the FAA.
“Aiming a laser at an airplane is not a game, it’s a federal felony and something the FBI takes very seriously,” Chris Hacker, Special Agent in Charge of FBI Atlanta, said in Tuesday’s release. “These alleged actions placed the lives of innocent air travelers and commercial airline crews in danger and must be prosecuted.”
This story was originally published November 10, 2020 at 1:20 PM with the headline "Man pointed lasers at planes flying into Hilton Head, feds say. Now he’s prison bound."
