[ad_1]
Andrew Drew White, 37, said he saw fishing being depleted by foreign fishing companies and decapitations by cartels while flying over the U.S. Navy-run island in Los Angeles County
About 60 nautical miles off the coast of Southern California in Los Angeles County, the U.S. Navy operates a clandestine training facility on San Clemente Island, where, federal prosecutors say, on April 6, Andrew Kyle White, illegally landed a small “fish spotter” plane he built himself on a government landing strip.
And not for the first time, federal prosecutors say. In October 2023, he was arrested after he landed on San Clemente Island without permission, but charges were not pursued after he signed a letter promising to never return.
However, on this crisp April day earlier this spring, according to a criminal complaint, White, 37, a married San Diego father of an infant, didn’t just land illegally. He also “proceeded to steal a government vehicle, namely, a white Ford F150 truck,” which he then drove erratically all over the island, crashing through gates and launching a military manhunt for the unknown intruder.
“Whatever [White’s] intentions were, the military did not know them; they responded as one might expect the military to respond to an unknown threat: they assumed the worst,” prosecutors argued in court documents. “The island went on a complete lockdown. Personnel engaged in a highly dangerous mission to locate the unknown intruder(s), notwithstanding the dangers they were exposing themselves to, from the weather, the terrain, and the potential unexploded ordnances that could have been underfoot in that area.”
When he was finally apprehended, White gave up without a fight, telling the Navy police that he landed on the island to “get away from the noise.” He also apologized for taking the truck, saying, “Sorry about the vehicle.”
This week White pleaded guilty to one felony count of theft of government property in excess of $1,000 and one misdemeanor count of illegal entry into a naval installation. He has been held in a federal lockup since July, when prosecutors say he cut off his ankle bracelet.
His prosecution has highlighted the secretive island off the coast of Los Angeles that the government describes as the Navy’s only live weapons training base and center of operation for the development of crucial weapons systems.
Scroll to continue reading
White, according to a sentencing memorandum, had become obsessed with the depletion of swordfish off the coasts of Long Beach and San Diego so he had begun to fly his own
customized plane, a single-engine Glastar, to research why.
“Mr. White worked fisheries both north and south of the border for the last six years. But during that time, he saw many things that disturbed him,” his attorneys wrote. From his plan, he watched “fisheries being depleted, entire species disappearing from their normal habitats.”
White complained that more and more regulations were being placed on California fishermen while international companies “operated with either no restrictions or
impunity.” Worse, his attorneys say, White, “experienced and witnessed the violence of the drug cartels who operated in the same coastal areas where the fleets fished. He saw decapitated heads and other acts of violence that traumatized him.”
Not to mention “his curiosity got the best of him,” his lawyer admits. But the government argues that White’s illegal landings created chaos on the military island, forcing a lockdown and manhunt that cost nearly 500 man-hours, which amounted to about $500,000 in losses, according to estimates from Navy officials.
The search also forced Navy personnel to traverse “multiple historic bombing ranges that have not been swept for unexploded ordnance,” Captain L. M. Jacobi, the commanding officer of Naval Base Coronado, where SEALs undergo their notoriously brutal training, wrote in a Navy victim impact statement.
Captain Jacobi asked the court to issue White the maximum sentence, but prosecutors are seeking a lighter sentence of six months in prison followed by three years of supervised release, according to the government’s sentencing memo.
White has agreed to avoid San Clemente Island, give up his Glastar plane and not renew or use his pilot’s license as part of his supervised release, prosecutors wrote in the memo.
White’s sentencing hearing is scheduled for September 29 by US District Judge Otis D. Wright II.
[ad_2]
Michele McPhee
Source link