El Paso Intel Center Error Causes Couple’s Arrest At Gunpoint

A California couple was arrested at gunpoint and hauled off to jail in handcuffs late last month because of an uncorrected database error at the El Paso Intelligence Center, known as EPIC, according to officials and accounts swirling on flight-training Web sites.

The mistaken Aug. 28 arrest of John and Martha King, who own a flight training company in San Diego, was allegedly caused by the failure of EPIC, a much criticized unit of the Drug Enforcement Administration, to erase faulty data that the King?s Cessna 172 was stolen, according to an account by the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association.

It was the second time the single-engine plane had been wrongly reported stolen and its pilot held at gunpoint at an airport, The Washington Post reported of the AOPA report. The first time was in 2009, according to a separate account in the AOPA magazine ?Flight Training.?

?It was EPIC that reported the aircraft to local police both times it was stopped,? AOPA reported.

Neither EPIC nor DEA officials could be reached for comment on the Labor Day holiday.

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