Charles “Butch” Troyer, cop who thwarted 1974 hijacking, dies after struggle with Parkinson’s

The retired Maryland police officer who helped stop a hijacker from carrying out an 1974 assassination attempt on Richard Nixon died this week, a local newspaper reported Friday.

Charles “Butch” Troyer passed away peacefully on Thursday at the age of 72, the Annapolis Capital reported. He had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease in 1998, and retired from the Anne Arundel County Police Department in 2005 following a 37-year career in law enforcement.

Troyer was working a second job doing security at BWI Airport on Feb. 22, 1974 when he played a pivotal role in preventing a would-be assassin from flying a hijacked airliner into the White House in an attempt at killing the president.

Samuel Joseph Byck had just shot and killed a Maryland Aviation Administration police officer when he took off towards a DC-9 airliner on the runway and boarded Delta Air Lines Flight 523 to Atlanta, taking eight passengers hostage.

Troyer, a 7-year veteran at the time, recovered the slain officer’s service weapon and charged the plane. He fired four shots with the cop’s .357 Magnum revolver, and two of the bullets penetrated a window, striking Byck. The hijacker took his own life moments later, but not before fatally shooting the plane’s pilot and injuring another.

Investigators later learned that Byck, armed with two gallon jugs of gasoline and an igniter, had intended on crashing the airliner into the White House.

The incident was the subject of a 2004 motion picture staring actor Sean Penn and spawned at least two documentaries, the Capital reported.

“It is the highlight of my career,” Troyer told the Baltimore Sun when he spoke of the hijacking in 2005. “It is the most important thing that happened.”

“He was an everyday street cop,” former colleague Ken Kulesz, a retired police sergeant, told the newspaper this week. “He was a friend for life. He’d give you the shirt off his back and was always willing to help out.”

Troyer graduated from Andover High School in 1963 and served a stint in the Navy before becoming a police officer in 1967. He’s survived by a wife, daughter, four grandchildren and a sister.

Family members have asked individuals wishing to express their condolences to donate to the National Parkinson’s Foundation in his memory in lieu of flowers.