Orangeburg Native Killed in Austin Plane Crash Suicide

The only victim killed in a Texas plane crash is a native of Orangeburg. Vernon Hunter was killed Thursday when a man who was apparently mad about his taxes flew his plane into an IRS building in Austin, Texas. Hunter grew up in Orangeburg. When Louis Haywood first heard reports that a plane flew into a building in Austin, Texas, he listened in disbelief along with the rest of the country. What he did not know was that his brother-in-law was inside. Orangeburg native and Wilkinson high school graduate Vernon Hunter had survived Vietnam and served more than twenty years in the army. He wasn’t killed in a war zone, he was killed in his office when Joe Stack apparently got mad at the IRS and flew his plane into the government building where Hunter worked. Hunter has been gone from Orangeburg for awhile, but Haywood remembers when he was in first grade and hunter drove his school bus, and when his brother-in-law was commissioned as an army officer, Haywood took part in the ceremony. He says it will be hard to forgive what happened to his brother-in-law, and he’ll never forget.