(TUPELO, Miss.) — A small plane is down and its pilot is in police custody after threatening to intentionally crash into a Walmart in Tupelo, Mississippi, the Benton County Sheriff’s office confirmed to ABC News Saturday.

The Federal Aviation Administration confirmed to ABC News that the plane landed in a field in Ripley, Mississippi. The agency said the pilot was the only person on board.

The Tupelo Police Department identified the pilot as Cory Wayne Patterson, an employee at Tupelo Aviation. Patterson allegedly stole a Beechcraft King Air C-90 twin engine aircraft from the Tupelo Regional Airport just after 5 a.m. Patterson had access to the plane as an employee of Tupelo Aviation, which operates out of the airport.

Once the plane landed, Patterson was taken into custody. Patterson is being charged with grand larceny and making terroristic threats, and federal charges are likely as well, Tupelo Police Department Chief John Quaka said at a press conference Saturday.

Police were notified that an airplane was flying over Tupelo at around 5 a.m. local time. The plane’s pilot made contact with E911 and was threatening to crash intentionally, according to a statement from police.

Negotiators were “able to convince him to not carry out this deed and to land the aircraft at Tupelo Airport,” Quaka said.

Patterson eventually aborted that landing and flew north, away from Tupelo. At 9:30 a.m., when the plane was close to running out of fuel, Patterson posted a message on Facebook that was “in essence, a goodbye,” according to the chief.

Police worked with Walmart and a nearby Dodge’s market to evacuate those stores and disperse people as much as possible.

“Citizens are asked to avoid that area until an all clear is given. With the mobility of an airplane of that type the danger zone is much larger than even Tupelo,” police said in a statement.

Flightradar24 showed the pilot had been flying in random circles far to the northwest of Tupelo, while flying very low and changing altitudes between 500 and 1500 mean sea level.

Mississippi state law enforcement were “closely monitoring” the situation, Gov. Tate Reeves confirmed on Twitter. The FAA said it is coordinating with local law enforcement and will investigate.

The pilot’s condition is currently unknown.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

ABC News’ Sam Sweeney contributed to this report.

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(JACKSON, Miss.) — Jackson, Mississippi, resident Velma Warner says the city’s most recent flooding brings up memories of two years past, when Pearl River floods forced many in the Canton Club neighborhood of Northeast Jackson to leave their homes.

Though Warner and her family had time to prepare their home for potential water breach, the effect flooding would have on the city’s water supply posed another–not entirely unpredictable–issue, she says. One month after the city issued a boil water notice, damage to the nearby O.B. Curtis Water Treatment Plant has left Jackson’s water supply contaminated and largely depleted.

“This is an ongoing issue, like years of knowing that the water plant needed a lot of work,” Warner said to ABC News. “I think our concern as citizens is even after all of this, after they put all the money into the water plant, will we have qualified staff to continue to run the plant?”

As city and state officials facilitate plant repairs and establish state-run water distribution sites throughout the city, making “significant gains”, local organizations such as Operation Good continue to work tirelessly in their efforts to get drinking water to as many as possible. Operation Good’s program manager Gino Womack says demand has even increased throughout the week, adding that the nonprofit went through hundreds of cases of water within an hour. Womack says contributions across the country have made an incredible impact on their ability to keep up and encouraged engagement in their #CureViolence program.

“It’s good to see the people, everybody, coming together, working together to get through this time that’s going on. And there’s people from outside the city…that have been very very supportive of things going on here,” Womack said to ABC News. “A lot of their support has enabled us to continue providing water to the citizens.”

Community members like Deon Thompson, a neighbor of Warner’s and an advocate for his community for the 20 years he’s lived there, has also taken it upon himself to get safe drinking water to as many people as he can. He says that for the first couple of days, water was nearly impossible to find in Jackson, but state distribution sites run by the National Guard have made it more accessible.

“There was some people that actually didn’t know about the distribution sites that [the state] had set up,” Thompson said to ABC News. “So we were able to go to those sites and get water for our communities, and then we stretch beyond our community to the others, like the elderly and those that actually couldn’t get out because we do have some disabled people in the neighborhood as well.”

Thompson, who was also affected by flooding in 2020, has lived throughout Jackson for over 50 years–his entire life. While this week’s flooding was not as severe as it has been, coupled with a failing water treatment plant and racial disparities indicate severe ongoing issues that may lead others in the neighborhood, including his elderly mother, to leave for good.

And with chances of rain on the radar this weekend, he says some residents are waiting for “a definite” before moving their belongings, paying storage fees rather than taking the risk of having to go through it all again.

“The flooding is one thing that has been going on and this water problem, with us drinking it, didn’t just start like back in July as some people say. This has been going on for the past three or four decades,” he said, adding that it reminds him of the Flint water crisis in which lead contamination in the city’s water supply hit communities of color hard.

“Race plays a very important part in this,” he said as Jackson has an 82.5% Black population according to the U.S. Census.

Thompson also voiced his concerns about how housing developments around Ross Barnett Reservoir, Jackson’s historic and current major source of potable water, have contributed to the flooding, a concern echoed by Warner. With this in mind, Thompson says he is focused on ensuring that the underlying causes of Jackson’s water emergency don’t “fall through the cracks.”

“We’re gonna assist and do whatever we can,” he said of seeing that officials make the necessary efforts to resolve the crisis.

“The progress that is being made there now as we even speak, it’s little progress, but little progress is better than no progress. And we have to kind of look at it from that standpoint and be very sure that our government officials are gonna do what they said they’re gonna do,” he added. “We’re gonna have to get through this here one day at a time. We’re gonna help one another, and we need to encourage one another because we don’t want people to leave.”

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(COLUMBUS, Ohio) — Body camera footage released by the Columbus Police Department shows events preceding the fatal shooting of 20-year-old Donovan Lewis.

“Donovan was a typical 20-year-old kid with a ton of friends,” Rex Elliott, the Lewis family attorney, said at a press conference Thursday. “Certainly, he had his challenges in life, but he was a very good person and loved very much.”

Lewis family members held each other close, some covering their ears and looking away as the body camera footage played on a screen at the press conference.

“There can be no question that excessive deadly force was recklessly used by Officer Anderson when he shot and killed an unarmed black man,” Elliott said.

Columbus police say they traveled to Lewis’ apartment located in the Columbus, Ohio, Hilltop neighborhood around 2 a.m. Tuesday morning to arrest him on three separate charges — domestic violence, assault and improper handling of a firearm.

When police arrived, they identified themselves and stood outside the apartment for approximately eight minutes asking those inside to exit, the footage shows.

Two people eventually exit the apartment and police enter with a K-9, finding Lewis in bed, the video shows.

Officer Ricky Anderson, a 30-year veteran with the Columbus Police Department and K-9 unit, appears to open fire almost immediately after police open the bedroom door to where Lewis was sleeping.

In the footage, Lewis is seen raising his hands as he lies in bed. Anderson is then seen firing the single gunshot.

“Officer Anderson opened the door and almost immediately fired a shot into the bedroom as Donovan was trying to get out of bed,” Elliot said. “Donovan was unarmed and he was abiding by police commands to come out of his room when he was shot in cold blood by Officer Anderson.”

Columbus Police Chief Elaine Bryant said Lewis appeared to be holding something in his hand, but only a vape pen was found on his bed and that there was no sighting of a weapon, at a press conference city officials held Tuesday following the shooting.

Lewis’ family plans to file a lawsuit against Anderson and the city of Columbus, according to Elliott.

“They want this officer punished, not permitted to be out on the street again,” Elliott said.

Anderson has been placed on paid administrative leave, according to the Columbus Police Department.

Mark Collins, the attorney representing Anderson, issued a statement Thursday obtained by ABC News, calling for a “thorough investigation.”

“When we analyze police-involved shootings, we must look to the totality of the circumstances, and we are expressly forbidden from using 20/20 hindsight, because unlike all of us, officers are not afforded the luxury of armchair reflection when they are faced with rapidly evolving, volatile encounters in dangerous situations,” Collins said.

A study released in February 2021, showed Franklin County, Ohio — which encompasses Columbus — has one of the highest rates of police shootings in Ohio and in the nation.

The study, conducted by the Ohio Alliance for Innovation in Population Health, ranked Franklin County 18th among the 100 most populous counties nationally on average for annual police-related fatalities.

In Columbus, there have been 62 shootings involving Columbus police officers since 2018, including Lewis’ shooting. Of those 62 shootings, 19 have resulted in a death, according to data from Columbus police and the Columbus Dispatch.

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(MEMPHIS, Tenn.) — Police said they are searching for a woman who was abducted while out for a run early Friday morning in Memphis.

Eliza Fletcher, 34, was last seen at approximately 4:30 a.m. Friday on Central Avenue in midtown Memphis before being forced into a dark-colored GMC Terrain, the Memphis Police Department said.

Memphis police said they were dispatched at around 7:45 a.m. to assist the University of Memphis police “regarding a missing person” in the area of Central Avenue and Zach Curlin Street.

The woman was jogging in the area when an unknown person approached her and she was “reportedly forced into an SUV and taken from the scene,” Memphis police said in a statement.

The suspect was believed to be in a dark-colored GMC Terrain traveling westbound on Central Avenue, police said.

The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, which is assisting in the search for Fletcher, said there currently is no known direction of travel for the suspect’s vehicle.

Fletcher was wearing a pink jogging top and purple running shorts at the time.

Authorities have released images of Fletcher and the SUV they believe she was forced into.

St. Mary’s Episcopal School said in a statement on social media that Fletcher is a “beloved” junior kindergarten teacher at the all-girls prep school.

Fletcher was described by police as 5 foot 6 inches and 137 pounds with brown hair and green eyes.

Anyone with information on her whereabouts is asked to call the Memphis Police Department at 901-528-2274 or 901-545-2677, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation at 1-800-TBI-FIND or 911.

ABC News’ Alexandra Faul contributed to this report.

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(NEW YORK) — Excessive heat and red flag warnings are in effect for much of California this weekend, as the state battles several blazes amid scorching temperatures.

Record-high temperatures could be set this Labor Day weekend, from San Diego to Los Angeles and up into Sacramento.

Residents in the state are urged to continue to conserve energy amid a heatwave that has tested the state’s energy grid, with temperatures across the state 10 to 20 degrees hotter than is typical this time of year.

“This kind of weather drives up energy demand, straining power generation equipment as people run their air conditioning,” California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office said in a statement Thursday.

Since Wednesday, “two new fires have started that threaten transmission lines that supply power to millions of homes,” his office said.

Newsom declared a state of emergency on Wednesday due to the high temperatures, to temporarily increase energy production and reduce demand. For the third day in a row, the California Independent System Operator, which operates the state’s power grid, issued an alert on Friday asking residents to reduce their electricity consumption during the late afternoon and evening hours.

California ISO President Elliot Mainzer said the grid experienced no “serious problems” on Thursday due to energy conservation efforts, as the prolonged heatwave pushed demand to the highest levels since September 2017.

“The hottest weather in this extended heatwave is still ahead of us,” Mainzer said in a video statement Friday. “Much of California will see record triple-digit temperatures with only moderate cooling at night, right through the Labor Day holiday weekend and into the middle of next week. So electricity conservation is going to be essential in keeping the power flowing to California without interruption.”

Amid the soaring temperatures, firefighters are also battling several blazes in California.

One of the newest threats is the Mill Fire in northern California’s Siskiyou County, which has quickly burned nearly 900 acres since starting Friday afternoon amid a red flag warning for the area and poses a danger to structures, powerlines and transmission lines.

Video of the #MillFire burning off of Mill St. in Weed, courtesy of Joshua Phenix. All of Weed is under a MANDATORY EVACUATION ORDER. LEAVE NOW! #cawx #fireseason2022 pic.twitter.com/YP7KrfNGOh

— Joshua Culbreth (@JoshCulbrethWX) September 2, 2022

Multiple evacuation orders and warnings are in place as Cal Fire warns of a “dangerous rate of spread” for the wildfire.

Among the largest active blazes in the state, the Route Fire has burned more than 5,000 acres in Castaic in Los Angeles County since igniting on Wednesday. It was nearly 40% contained as of Friday morning.

The Border 32 Fire in San Diego County has also burned more than 4,400 acres since Wednesday. It was 20% contained as of Friday morning.

ABC News’ Jennifer Harrison, Daniel Amarante and Max Golembo contributed to this report.

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