A Cleveland man whose two-hour rampage included ripping up radar equipment at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport on one of the busiest travel days of the year was found not guilty by reason of insanity on Wednesday.
Prosecutors and defense attorneys agreed that Isaac Woolley’s severe mental illnesses caused him to be unable to appreciate the seriousness of the crimes he committed on the day before Thanksgiving in 2022.
That included destroying radar equipment that monitored incoming and departing flights, carjacking a woman and later stealing a second car that he drove onto the airport runway. The airport temporarily shut down, and flights were delayed and diverted from Cleveland.
U.S. District Judge Christopher Boyko accepted the agreement, which included Woolley admitting that he’d carried out the spree.
Boyko ordered that Woolley undergo a psychiatric evaluation to determine if he’s a danger to others and set a hearing for March 17. Woolley, 28, could be committed to a mental health facility, released with orders to comply with a treatment program or outright released from custody.
The decision came after U.S. Bureau of Prisons psychologist Heather Ross found Woolley suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder and brief psychotic disorder.
Prosecutors previously wrote in court records that Woolley put flight passengers’ life in danger, even though the backup radar kicked in.
Woolley faced six charges, including violating an airport security, violence at an airport, carjacking and destruction of airport facilities.
The string of events began about 7 p.m. on Nov. 23, 2022, when Woolley carjacked a woman by yanking her from her SUV by the neck. He drove the SUV to the airport’s radar tower on Grayton Road and disabled a security gate by ripping up its wiring.
He turned off the radar tower’s power source on the ground level, walked up eight flights of stairs and ripped up wires on the radar equipment. He left undetected.
About an hour later, Woolley stole a second SUV from a woman looking for a lost pet in Fairview Park. He drove back to the airport, crashed through a gate and drove down a runway before abandoning the SUV. He escaped out of a hole in an airport fence and was arrested about 30 minutes later.
Woolley, a military veteran, later made a series of statements to police and on recorded jail calls in which he said wanted to “make a statement for those who don’t have a voice in society,” and that he was trying to get to Alabama to see his children.
Woolley’s family had reported him missing about two months before the incident.
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