LAWRENCEVILLE, Ga. (AP) -- Authorities are investigating how a charter jet that was reported stolen from St. Augustine, Fla., ended up at Gwinnett County Airport-Briscoe Field.
The plane, a $7 million Cessna Citation 7, was found at the airport Monday and remained there Tuesday morning, said Darren Moloney, spokesman for the Gwinnett County Police Department.
Workers at the Gwinnett County airport found the 10-passenger plane on the tarmac around 1 p.m. Monday. Since then, crime scene technicians have investigated the interior of the plane, which is owned by Pinnacle Air of Springdale, Ark.
Pinnacle Air had no comment on the incident Tuesday.
People have already come forward to Gwinnett Police to give details on the theft, Moloney said. ''They're giving us some pretty detailed information that we're trying to confirm or deny,'' he said without elaborating.
There is no evidence that there were weapons or drugs on the plane, Moloney said.
''We've ruled out anything diabolical or sinister,'' he said. ''We didn't find anything threatening on the plane.''
The FBI is also investigating although the theft does not appear to be linked to terrorism, said Lisa Ray, spokeswoman at the Georgia Office of Homeland Security.
The plane landed at the airport sometime between 9 p.m. Saturday night and 6 a.m. Sunday morning, Moloney said. Although the plane landed when the airport's flight tower was not operating, officials said that is not unusual. Once on the ground, an automatic gate would have let the person out of the airport, Moloney said.
The Federal Aviation Administration is probing its own traffic system to see if there is any record of the plane flying during the time in question, FAA spokeswoman Kathleen Bergen said.
Moloney said there were not yet any suspects and it was not known whether more than one person was involved in the theft. But officials said the person who took the plane is likely an experienced pilot.
Planes are easy to steal if you know how to fly them, because they usually do not require a key to start the engines, Gwinnett County Police Sgt. D. Mattox told the Gwinnett Daily Post.
On Tuesday, the plane was sitting on the airport's tarmac surrounded by orange cones. The front edge of one wing was damaged, but the plane did not appear to be disabled.
The Gwinnett County Airport-Briscoe Field has been the focus of media attention before. Two of the suicide hijackers who crashed planes into the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001 - Mohamed Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi - also trained there for a time.
Ray had no comment on whether this latest incident raised larger questions of security at the airport, which is the fifth-busiest in Georgia.
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