A service will be held Friday in Austin for Vernon Hunter, an Internal Revenue Service worker killed last week when a tax protester flew his plane into an office building.
Texas Department of Transportation spokesman John Hurt says the U.S. 183 frontage road near seven-story Echelon I is closed until the building is determined to be structurally sound.
Investigators say Joe Stack on Thursday crashed his plane into the building that houses IRS offices, killing himself and Hunter. Stack's multipage anti-government online rant was discovered after the crash.
Samantha Bell, daughter of Joe Stack, told ABC's "Good Morning America" the plane attack was "inappropriate" while at the same time she praised his anti-government and anti-tax views.
Asked if he considered her father a hero, she said "yes." She spoke in a telephone interview from Norway, where she lives. Bell said her father was not a hero for taking a life, but that "because, now maybe people will listen."
Hunter's son, Ken said he's alarmed by comments that the pilot was a hero.
"How can you call someone a hero who after he burns down his house, he gets into his plane ... and flies it into a building to kill people? My dad Vernon did two tours of duty in Vietnam. My dad's a hero," Hunter told Good Morning America. "To keep the government from getting money, he [Stack] burned his house. To keep them from getting money, he crashed his airplane. That's not the act of a patriot. That's the act of a terrorist, and that's what he is."
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Bell said she offered her deepest condolences to Hunter's family. She said her father's last actions were wrong. "But if nobody comes out and speaks up on behalf of injustice, then nothing will ever be accomplished," she told ABC. "But, I do not agree with his last action with what he did. But I do agree about the government."
Pastor Gaylon Clark of Greater Mt. Zion Baptist Church, where Hunter attended, says a service will be held at 11 a.m. Friday at a bigger church, St. James Missionary Baptist Church.
Federal investigators spent the weekend searching for evidence in the heavily damaged Echelon I building.
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