Pilot crashes plane into US tax office; 2nd body found

Zeenews Bureau - Austin: Emergency crews have found a second body in the wreckage where a small plane smashed into an Austin office building. 

Austin Fire Department Battalion Chief Palmer Buck said late Thursday that authorities "have now accounted for everybody”, but declined to discuss the identities of those found. 

Authorities said earlier that the pilot who crashed into the seven-storey building was presumed dead and that one worker in the building had been missing. 

Authorities say Joseph A Stack, a software engineer furious with the Internal Revenue Service, launched a suicide attack on the agency by crashing his small plane into the building that contains nearly 200 IRS employees. 

The crash set off a raging fire that sent workers running for their lives. 

Federal authorities had found an online note reportedly written by the 53-year-old software engineer. The note titled ‘Well Mr Big Brother IRS Man! Take my pound of flesh and sleep well’. 

"I choose to not keep looking over my shoulder at 'big brother' while he strips my carcass, I choose not to ignore what is going on all around me, I choose not to pretend that business as usual won't continue; I have just had enough," the note reads. 

Hours after posting the note, Stack set fire to his home, drove to a municipal airport, took-off in his single-engine Piper Cherokee aircraft and crashed it into the multi-storey office building, MSNBC reported quoting authorities. 

The plane hit the side of the building between its first and second floor where the office of the IRS is located. A spokesman for the IRS said 190 people worked in the attacked office and it was "in the process of accounting for all of our employees". 

The US Department of Homeland Security officials said they did not believe the crash was an act of terrorism. 

"We do not yet know the cause of the plane crash. At this time, we have no reason to believe there is a nexus to criminal or terrorist activity," Department of Homeland Security spokesman Matt Chandler told ABC News. 

Chandler said two F-16 jets were sent from Houston to patrol over Austin as a precaution after the crash. 

Witnesses said the pilot appeared to be in control of the plane moments before the crash. 

"It hit it and the strange thing was the engine seemed to me to running at full power. It didn't seem like the plane was in trouble. It was going full blast. It's not a very fast airplane, but this thing was really moving fast," the ABC report quoted a witness as saying.