Fox News is reporting A Horizon Air passenger plane crashed on an island in Puget Sound Friday night, not long after a suspect conducted an “unauthorized take-off” from Seattle-Tacoma International Airport in Washington state, officials said.
Witnesses reported seeing a large plume of smoke in the air above Ketron Island after the plane went down. No passengers were believed to be aboard the Q400 aircraft, airport officials said.
Within minutes of the plane’s takeoff, the military scrambled two F-15 jets from Oregon to follow it, authorities said. They pursued the aircraft before it went down on Ketron Island, between Tacoma and Olympia.
F-15 “pilots kept plane out of harms way and people on ground safe,” the sheriff’s office tweeted. The jets were not involved in the crash, it said.
Washington Gov. Jay Inslee thanked the fighter pilots for keeping residents safe.
“Those pilots are trained for moments like tonight and showed they are ready and capable,” he said in a tweet.
