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A 29-year-old Horizon employee stole an empty plane from Sea-Tac Airport Friday night. Witnesses shared footage of the plane's erratic flight before it crashed in Pierce County around 8:45 p.m.
A short time later, the Horizon plane crashed on Ketron Island, a small wooded area in Pierce County.
Friday Troy Frantz was outside his Lakewood home Friday evening with his son when a noise forced their eyes up.
Frantz, who puts out a daily vlog on his YouTube page, The Halloween Hellmouth, already had his camera rolling.
“Oh my gosh, did you feel that? The house just rumbled!” Frantz said into his handheld camera.
Moments later, he captured the stolen Horizon Air Q400 flying overhead.
“I couldn’t see it until I reviewed the video later and I saw the Alaska Airlines logo,” he said Saturday at his home.
Frantz would later find out that he had documented the stolen Horizon Air plane, taken from SeaTac, and the two NORAD-deployed F-15 fighter jets who chased after it.
Frantz was one of many witnesses who saw Friday night's events play out over their heads.
“You always hope to capture something, and hopefully that something is positive. Unfortunately, we capture things like this too,” said Frantz.
Frantz’s vlog from that day had over 51,000 views by Saturday evening. He said he feels fortunate that none of the witnesses looking up were harmed by the rogue plane.
“It’s horrific thinking why could have happened.”
Passengers at Sea-Tac were held by a temporary ground stop Friday while the stolen plane was in flight.
"They said there was some kind of emergency somewhere on the runway. After that, we just sat there for 40 minutes. But of course, everyone was just pulling out their phone and finding out what's going on and seeing this crazy story," said one air passenger.
A man traveling from New York to Seattle said his family spent a few hours on the tarmac. By the time they arrived at baggage claim, it was crowded with people.
“I saw some really unhappy faces when we were walking through. Probably people waiting for hours with little ones. Really tough. But more than that, the tragedy is what strikes me,” he said.
Quincy Carr was flying into Sea-Tac to perform on a Norwegian cruise line ship. He said the pilot told passengers there was an incident and they were stuck on the tarmac for about an hour.
"I felt like we were on the ground and we were safe, we weren’t in the sky while something was going on," he said after getting off the plane. "So it really wasn’t that bad — to me."
"But I do know there were people on the plane that were kind of panicked," he said.
Mark Reger was standing in his driveway near Steilacoom when he saw the planes fly overhead.
"We looked across the water there's this huge fireball coming up off the west coast of Ketron Island, followed by smoke. There were some fire planes in the air. It clearly seemed immediately like there was a plane crash," he said.
"It's super scary when you think about how fast those planes are moving, the distance from Ketron Island to these houses in minuscule. It's really scary to think what might have happened under slightly different circumstances."
More coverage of the stolen plane crash:
