Flight Intructor kidnapped student

[Airbubba]

I had a Navy colleague years ago who did a plea deal to avoid felony kidnap charges. He was given a choice of going to prison or going into the Navy. He went into the Navy, they paid to have him finish college and he became an Aviator. His Morehouse roommate, the future actor Samuel L. Jackson, faced similar charges and took the felony rap instead.

IASCO settlement: Jonathan McConkey, Kelsi Hoser plead no-contest to misdemeanors

David Benda, Redding Record Searchlight Published 4:33 p.m. PT March 19, 2019 | Updated 8:57 a.m. PT March 20, 2019

Nearly a year after being accused of allegedly threatening an IASCO Flight Training student from China and forcibly trying to deport him, two former administrators at the Redding school agreed to settle the case Tuesday.

Jonathan McConkey, the school’s former general manager, and Kelsi Hoser, the school’s former director of administration and secretary, pleaded no-contest to misdemeanor charges in Shasta County Superior Court.

McConkey was sentenced to 60 days in jail, which he can serve by electronic monitoring, and three years’ probation.

Hoser was sentenced to three years of informal probation.

Attorneys Naomi Chung, left, and Douglas Rappaport, center, appear in court on Tuesday, March 19, 2019. Former IASCO general Manager Jonathan McConkey stands next to Rappaport. Kelsi Hoser also was in court but is not in the picture. (Photo: David Benda)

“I think it was appropriate,” Douglas L. Rappaport, McConkey’s attorney, said after Tuesday’s plea agreement.

For months, Rappaport had been negotiating with the Shasta County District Attorney’s Office to get the felony reduced to a misdemeanor. McConkey had been separately charged with making criminal threats.

Hoser had been individually charged with preventing or dissuading a witness or victim from reporting a crime.

They were accused of forcibly trying to send 21-year-old student pilot Tianshu “Chris” Shi back to China against his will.

Outside the courthouse Tuesday, McConkey told the Record Searchlight that he is “not some malicious monster.” He was simply trying to reunite a troubled child with his mother.

In court papers, Rappaport alleged that Shi’s mother was so desperate to keep her son enrolled at IASCO that she went to the school’s home office in China and attempted to bribe the company, one time offering up “a brown paper bag filled with cash.”

Shi’s mother also told the home office that her son would commit suicide if he was expelled from the flight school, Rappaport alleged.

“That was one apology I wasn't willing to give if I wasn’t able to do anything,” McConkey said Tuesday.

The anger McConkey can be heard showing in a 3-minute audio tape recorded by Shi and part of an eight-page Redding police investigative report was out of character, IASCO colleagues and a former assistant U.S. attorney, who is McConkey’s friend, said in a motion Rappaport had filed in January to get the charges reduced to a misdemeanor.

Naomi Chung, the attorney representing Hoser, said Hoser would have preferred to see the case go to trial to clear her name, but there was no guarantee and said it was time to move on.

Tuesday marked the end of a case that grabbed national and global media coverage when news broke of McConkey and Hoser’s arrest on May 25, 2018. The two were originally charged in June of kidnapping, first-degree residential burglary and false imprisonment by violence.

McConkey had been separately charged with making criminal threats, while Hoser had been individually charged with preventing or dissuading a witness or victim from reporting a crime.

Kelsi Hoser (Photo: Shasta County Jail)

They were accused of forcibly trying to send 21-year-old student pilot Tianshu “Chris” Shi back to China against his will.

The anger McConkey can be heard showing in a 3-minute audio tape recorded by Shi and part of an eight-page Redding police investigative report was out of character, IASCO colleagues and a former assistant U.S. attorney, who is McConkey’s friend, said in a motion Rappaport had filed in January to get the charges reduced to a misdemeanor.

On the tape McConkey threatens to break Shi’s arm if he did not get into a van so he could be flown to San Francisco for a flight to China.

Rappaport said in his motion that police later obtained a video of the incident “and lo and behold, nowhere on the tape did it show that Chris was ‘violently shoved into the kitchen counter and then to the ground,’” which Shi alleged.
McConkey resigned from IASCO in July. Hoser also no longer works at the flight school. Both also no longer live in Shasta County.

Despite the plea deal, McConkey’s career as pilot is still in limbo.

If he successfully completes his probation, the felony charges will be expunged from his record. A felony conviction would end McConkey’s career as a pilot.