Flight instructor Madisyn Garcia was fed up. She and other instructors working for Red Eagle Aviation in Kalispell, Montana, were getting harassed in midair by someone on the ground shining a green laser pointer at them.
Then on Nov. 25, 2023, Garcia spotted a green beam shooting out from a white pickup truck. With a young student pilot seated next to her in a Cessna Model 172, Garcia called 911 from the air, according to John Paul Noyes, Garcia’s supervisor at Red Eagle.
“She'd been hit a couple times,” said Noyes. “My other guys have been hit a time or two, and she happened to be up, and she spotted what she thought was the truck and said, ‘Hey, this guy's doing this. I'm gonna follow him.’ And she was able to stay high enough and safe enough to kind of tell them where he was.”
From the sky, Garcia guided law enforcement to Nolan Wayne Hamman, 32, to a location outside Kalispell.
“Flathead County Sheriff’s Office deputies responded and located Hamman on the ground with the laser pointer,” according to a statement from the Montana U.S. Attorney’s Office. “Hamman admitted to shining the laser at the plane while it was in flight. Further, Hamman engaged in this behavior over several months, and evidence demonstrated he pursued these planes because he believed they were tracking him.”
Hamman was charged with knowingly aiming a laser pointer at an aircraft in the air, which is a federal crime. He eventually pleaded guilty, and on Feb. 6, Hamman was sentenced to 2.5 years in prison.
Blinding Laser Beams
Hamman purchased his laser pointer on Amazon, where promotional images show a green laser pointer shooting into the night sky.
At night, when a green laser pointer hits an aircraft windshield, it blinds the pilot by making the instruments inside the cockpit unreadable.
“When that laser goes in the cockpit, it's really remarkable because of the refractural qualities of the windows you can't see anything in the cockpit anymore,” said Noyes. “You can't see anything but green and your eye can no longer detect all the colors in the aircraft, i.e. the instruments. I mean you're totally blind. So it's a pretty significant issue.”
“Laser strikes continue to stay at high levels with pilots reporting 13,304 laser strikes to the FAA in 2023,” according to the Federal Aviation Administration. That’s nearly double the number the FAA recorded in 2016.
In Wyoming in 2024, laser strikes occurred in Casper and Cheyenne, with Cheyenne Regional Airport reporting several laser strikes last year.
Tim Bradshaw, Cheyenne’s director of aviation, told Cowboy State Daily in March 2024, “I’ve never seen anything like this. Blinding a pilot with a laser could cause a crash, which not only puts the passengers and flight crew in danger, but we’re in a city with houses and businesses around us. Think of what could happen.”
Nolan Wayne Hamman (Flathead County Detention Center) 
What a pilot sees during a laser strike. (FAA)
Game Of Tag?
After his arrest in Kalispell, Hamman tried to explain away his laser strikes on aircraft as “playing tag” and a “pissing contest,” according to court documents.
His obsession with low flying aircraft, according to court documents, started as a result of his drug use.
He stated that he noticed aircraft flying “circles over felony drug trafficking houses.”
Hamman later confessed to authorities that his “methamphetamine use makes him ‘paranoid’ and an ‘overly observant person.’”
Hamman continued to portray his actions as an innocent game, stating, “I am a nerd for my laser pointer.”
Federal prosecutors disagreed, arguing in a pre-sentencing report that, “Hamman engaged in this behavior not out of a benign curiosity, but because he was determined to combat law enforcement’s efforts to track him. Most saliently, his actions continually endangered multiple pilots, including two juveniles, and the safety of those on the ground in the Kalispell area.”
When Hamman spotted low-flying aircraft above him, according to court documents, he “responded with the force available to him, by blinding the pilots with his laser such that they would pay a price for following him.
Ironically, Hamman’s paranoia about being followed by aircraft turned into a self-fulfilling prophecy, when he was spotted by a flight instructor from the air.
Prosecutors stated Hamman “would have continued had the adult victim pilot not expended considerable energy and risk in tracking him down.”
David Madison can be reached at david@cowboystatedaily.com.
