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| Agricultural pilots often use dirt roads as runways. |
CARUTHERSVILLE, MISSOURI - The missing Air Tractor AT-602 crop duster that went off radar and vanished last week has been found on a dirt road behind the Lady Luck Casino RV Park. Pilot Cooter Holland was located by TSA authorities at a nickel slot machine on the main level of the casino.
Holland, 37, of Bay, Arkansas and his plane had been reported missing on March 10 when he failed to return to his airstrip east of Bay following a routine fertilizer application. His wife, Sheryl Crow Holland, 20, called authorities when she arrived home at 3 a. m. and Holland's truck was not in the driveway.
"There weren't nobody in here with my babies," she said. "His sorry ass was supposed to be home. Cooter was supposed to be home at 6:00, and I didn't go out until 7:00. That son-of-a-bitch knew I was going to Chili's in Paragould with Reeta and Dwayne and Janice. He don't never answer his phone, but I figured he had to be close to the house. I put Jay Jay and Pooter in bed watching a Bubble Guppies DVD and locked the door and went. I couldn't believe it when I got home, the babies were fine, but Cooter weren't nowhere around."
Investigators determined that the airplane was last seen spreading a load of urea onto a field just north of Manila, Arkansas, near the Big Lake National Wildlife Refuge.
Speculation had been rampant throughout Northeast Arkansas and the Missouri Bootheel since the plane was reported missing. Theories ran the gamut from terrorism, to mechanical failure, to pilot error.
"I thought for sure that Cooter had gone Al-Qaeda on us," said Truman Campbell, a Bay resident who also happened to be at the casino at the time the authorities arrived. "He's always been nutty. He might have wanted to fly that thing into the side of the mall in Jonesboro, for all I know. This casino isn't that big. I can't believe I didn't see him. I've been here since yesterday, myself."
TSA publicist Tipperary Knobel said that Holland was questioned for several hours in the poker room by investigators, but released when it was determined that he had broken no laws.
"The poker room was a good place for us to talk because it is only open on the weekends and was empty," said Knobel. "Why play cards here when you are so close to Tunica or St. Louis? Anyway, Holland landed his plane, legally, on an abandoned county road, got permission from the farmer to park it there, hiked around to the casino, and apparently went on a little winning streak at the crap table."
Knobel said that Holland had rented a room at the Drury Inn and Suites out by I-55, taking a shuttle bus to and from the hotel at least twice, but that most of the time he was at the casino. Holland won two thousand dollars playing dice, then hit a large jackpot on a $5 slot. At one point he was up over $9000, but had lost it all by the time the TSA arrived.
"He had just gone to the ATM to get out twenty dollars for the nickel slots," said Knobel. "He should have gotten back in that plane and flown his ass home after he hit that Triple Diamond machine. I don't understand people who can't leave when they are winning."
Holland was escorted from the casino by his wife, Reeta, Dwayne, and Janice.
"Hell, it looks like three-fourths of Bay is in Caruthersville this weekend," said Campbell. "If Mr. and Mrs. Corning had been over here, we would have had enough of the town council present to legalize casinos at home and we wouldn't have to drive all the way over here."
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