NEW YORK, Jan 7: The teenage pilot who crashed his single engine plane into a Tampa (Florida) Bank of America building expressed his empathy and support for Osama bin Laden and the hijackers who crashed into the World Trade Center towers in New York.

Tampa police chief Bennie Holder told reporters on Sunday that the investigators found a suicide note in the pocket of 15-year- old Charles J. Bishop, who crashed a light plane into the 28th floor of the Bank of America Plaza on Saturday evening.

“The young man, Charles Bishop, can best be described as a young man with very few friends, and was very much a loner,” Holder said at a news conference. “With this action, we assume he was a very troubled young man.” No one else was injured in the accident.

However, police chief Holder did not release the contents of the short, handwritten note.

The note expressed support for the Sept 11 terrorists, he said. The note, he said, also made it clear that the youth had acted alone, and there are no apparent links to any terrorist organizations.

A White House spokesman said that the FBI was investigating and that the incident did not appear linked to terrorism.

The incident has left the US investigators baffled as they continue to search for the accomplices of the hijackers in the Muslim community.

Thousands of Muslim, whom the US law enforcement agencies consider suspects have been rounded up by the authorities since Sept 11.

In a report the New York Times said that the incident, however, raised concern about the security of thousands of small planes at airports around the country, which many aviation officials say are vulnerable to the same threat.

The amateur flew east across Old Tampa Bay, ignoring a Coast Guard helicopter pilot frantically gesturing for him to stop, and headed for a bank of office buildings lining the Hillsborough River downtown.

Butch Wilson, an investigator for the National Transportation Safety Board, said the youth was in full control of the four-seat plane and appeared to know exactly what he was doing.