UPDATE, 11/12, 9:32am:
Surveillance video of the incident has been released by police. In it, Mr. Hedglin can be seen running across the tarmac to the plane and taking the plane for quite a ride around the airport. Check it out below.
PREVIOUSLY: A SkyWest pilot sought by police in connection with the killing of a Colorado Springs woman has been identified as the man who tried to steal a commercial jet at the St. George, Utah, airport before shooting himself to death inside the plane.
Brian Joseph Hedglin, 40, had been on the lam since Friday, police said, in connection with the murder of his girlfriend, Christina Cornejo, 39. A commercial pilot who was on administrative leave from SkyWest, Hedglin was free on a $10,000 bond after being arrested for harassing Corneho. According to published reports, Cornejo broke up with Hedglin in March after four years of dating.
Hedglin apparently was trying to escape early on Tuesday morning when he drove his motorcycle to the St. George Municipal Airport and jumped a barbed wire fence at about 1 a.m., said St. George spokesman Mark Mortensen. He said Hedglin used leather gloves to scale the perimeter fence.
A security guard noticed the still-warm bike and, moments later, heard the engines of a Delta Connection Bombardier CRJ-200 owned by SkyWest start to rev up.
Mortensen told reporters that Hedglin backed up the regional jet, hitting the jet bridge with the left wing. He then rolled the plane forward, scraping the same wing along the terminal building. He then taxied through a fence before crashing into several cars in an airport parking lot.
Unable to take off, Hedglin killed himself inside the plane, Mortensen said.
No one was hurt in the botched getaway but enough damage was done to shut down the airport. About a dozen flights take off and land on weekdays, with most flying between the southern Utah airport and Salt Lake City and two flights connecting St. George and Los Angeles.
SkyWest said in a statement that Hedglin was "on administrative leave" at the time of the incident.
"The aircraft did sustain damage. The extent of the damage is currently being inspected by our maintenance and safety professionals," the airline said.
Police, the FBI and the Transportation Security Administration were all at the scene to investigate.
Hedglin and Cornejo were both members of the Colorado Army National Guard. A Guard spokesman said that Hedglin had served as a part-time cook since 2008 but was never deployed. Cornejo was a full-time officer of the 100 Missile Defense Brigade and had served in the Guard since 2006.