Stalking may not be viewed as dangerous as physical assault or murder, but it should not be the crime that is overlooked. Mild stalking is an everyday occurrence, and authorities sometimes do not pay heed to them, waiving them off as minor cases. However, what happens when the stalking continues to torment the individual and their families for years, stepping closer and closer to the brink of something more serious? That’s when the authorities finally react.
Meaww reports about Michael Arnold, a 65-year-old man from New Hampshire, who had been charged with stalking a woman in New York with his small propeller airplane since 2019. The ghastly details of his spine-chilling endeavors to get closer and closer to the NY lady and her family follow.
Meaww reports that Arnold would allegedly fly his single-engine Cessna 180 over her Schuylerville, New York, home multiple times a week at an impact point so low to her roof that the windows and doors would rattle with the impact of the tremor.
A few days after his arrest, Arnold was charged on Friday, October 6, with aggravated stalking, impeding, providing false information to a police officer, and violating a restraining order.
Meaww reports the woman Cassie Wilusz, who said that Arnold had been stalking her since 2019 by flying his single-engine Cessna 180 over her home in Schenectady, New York, three times a week at 7 a.m. She recalled saying that her family was traumatized by the plane that came so close to their roof that it felt like it would fall through the roof.
Fox News covers Wilusz’s statement, which says, “It’s a nightmare. He’s terrorized my family, and we’ve been so afraid,” continuing, “All these years he has been winning because nobody would do anything until now.” Adding to this, she elucidated, “I didn’t know if he’d fly into our home. I didn’t know what he was capable of,” she said. “I thought, what if he shoots me.”
Meaww reports that in November 2022, Arnold used his 1976 propeller plane to pelt tomatoes on her house as well as her neighbor’s properties. The 42-year-old had complained to the Federal Aviation Administration and New York State Police, but no one paid any heed. Parallel to this timeline, Wilusz’s husband, Dave Wilusz, had been diagnosed with colon cancer and sadly passed away on May 22. Wilsuz continued in her statement, “As Dave’s cancer progressed, I just couldn’t fight two battles, and I stopped calling the police because the police wouldn’t do anything,” adding, “The entire time Dave was in hospice, he would just circle us three to four times a week.” She said that Dave had reassured her that everything would be okay, saying, “Cassie, this isn’t going to be your forever. I promise you, you and [our daughter] are going to be OK.”
Wilsuz reported that the very next day after her husband passed away, Arnold flew over again, saying, “It felt like he was going to come through my house and everything shook, and I’m like, I can’t, I can’t live like this anymore.” “I ended up losing my mind and got super scared, and I wouldn’t let [my daughter] out of my sight,” she added. Reports speculated that he was arrested five times due to the allegation, but nothing hinged his attempts to continue tormenting Wilsuz.
Wilusz owned Revolution Cafe in a small town north of New York City. She was under the impression that Arnold was just a regular customer who came in, but she received an email from him that shook her to her core.“It was pictures of him tied up with naked women, like 20 photos, and he was telling me to open my mind,” she said. Her polite message to him on Facebook, asking him not to send her these vile messages and thereafter blocking him, threw him over the edge. There began his endless cycle of circling her house and tormenting her family.
He even took it a step further and threatened Wilsuz’s daughter through a fake Facebook account, which the Saratoga County Sheriff’s deputy Nikki Voegler discovered which said, “Change your wicked ways, girl. Karma is a wonderful thing, [your daughter] will be next. You will see them all pass before you,” he allegedly wrote, as per Fox News. The police also found his fake social media account, which he used to write on her husband’s obituary page.
“When times(sic) up, times(sic) up. We all have to live with our karma,” he wrote.
Meaww reported that he had previously posted a $5,000 bond and was ordered not to go within 300 feet of his plane. He was also served with a temporary restraining order in the summer by an FBI agent in Albany, New York, who found out that he was keeping his plane at the Bennington airport.
When authorities asked Arnold the details of who the pilot was, he did not disclose it. He said, “I might be able to, but I don’t want to throw anybody under the bus. If they don’t want to get involved, I can’t get them involved.” per WCAX.
Wilsuz hopes for a happy ending to this never-ending misery, stating, “I just want [my daughter] to see justice because she shouldn’t have to see in 2023 a man do this to a woman and nobody listen.”