Plane Thief Pulled Off Some Sweet Moves Before Ending it All

11 Aug, 2018

Richard “Beebo” Russell, the Horizon Air employee who stole a plane from Sea-Tac Airport on Friday night, performed midair acrobatics over Puget Sound and then crashed into an island, was an avid traveler, a high-school football standout and Christian youth leader who once operated an Oregon bakery with his wife.

Russell, 29, was presumed killed in the crash of the Bombardier Q400 turboprop on Ketron Island, just west of Steilacoom. Investigators searched the site Saturday for the aircraft’s flight-data recorder and cockpit voice recorder.

“He was a quiet guy. It seemed like he was well liked by the other workers,” said Rick Christenson, an operational supervisor with Horizon Air who retired in May. “I feel really bad for Richard and for his family. I hope they can make it through this.”
Russell worked as a member of Horizon’s tow team, Christenson said, and helped handle baggage for the airline.

Two-person tow teams are responsible for moving airplanes on the tarmac. One person drives a tow tug, pulling the plane. The other communicates with the tower from inside the airplane’s cockpit and can apply the plane’s brakes in an emergency, Christenson said.

Tow teams are trained how to use some airplane systems such as the auxiliary power unit, hydraulics and radios, said Christenson, who did not know Russell well.
Before hearing that Russell was involved, Christenson watched as the incident played out Friday night. He was sitting on the deck outside of his cousin’s home, looking out at the Tacoma Narrows Bridge and Puget Sound. The sun had begun to redden and fall into summer’s haze.

“It was absolutely beautiful,” he said. Suddenly, two F-15 fighter jets appeared, and took hard turns south.

“I said, something’s weird. Something’s not right here.”

Ten minutes later, he said, a commercial plane cruised about 500 feet above his cousin’s home, he said.

“We got binoculars and were watching him. He was flying real strange, hard banks, real radical flying for a Dash-8,” Christenson said.

The plane plunged toward the water in a nose dive at one point.

“We were all screaming, ‘Oh my god, oh my god,’ and I was yelling, ‘Pull up, pull up,’ ” Christenson said.

Somehow, Russell pulled out of the descent, seemingly just feet from the water, then took off farther south.

Later, when he saw a cloud of black smoke, “I knew what happened,” Christenson said.
Word soon spread among former colleagues.

“Everybody’s stunned … that something like this would happen,” Christenson said. “How could it? Everybody’s been through background checks.”

He said it was difficult to listen to the audio recording, widely published on news websites, as Russell communicated with an air traffic controller.

“It’s chilling listening to this young man. It makes me cringe,” Christenson said. “It was hard to sleep last night.”

A man who answered the door of the Graham home of Russell’s mother-in-law Saturday afternoon said the family was in shock and awaiting more information before speaking to the media. Relatives were arriving at the home as members of the media gathered outside.

Russell’s family and friends released a statement later Saturday, calling him a “warm, compassionate man.”

”This is a complete shock to us,” the statement read. “As the voice recordings show, Beebo’s intent was not to harm anyone and he was right in saying there are so many people who loved him.”

They declined to answer questions.

Airline and law-enforcement officials did not publicly confirm Russell’s identity, but provided some details of his background and how he was able to steal the plane.

“He worked a shift yesterday. We believe he was in uniform,” said Brad Tilden, the chief executive officer of Alaska Air Group, the parent company to Horizon Air. “It was his job to be around airplanes.”

Tilden, speaking at a news conference Saturday at Sea-Tac Airport, said Russell had been with the company for nearly four years.

Tilden said the plane was parked at Plane Cargo 1, in the north side of the airport. The plane was not scheduled to fly Friday evening.

“The individual did use a pushback tractor to rotate the aircraft 180 degrees so he could then taxi the aircraft,” said Mike Ehl, a Port of Seattle official, confirming that the man did that himself, first driving the tractor and then the plane.

Just after 7:30 p.m., Russell took off. Tilden said the traffic control tower “did know this was an unauthorized departure.”

Horizon CEO Gary Beck said the ground-service agent, who is not believed to have had a pilot’s license, pulled off some “incredible maneuvers” once airborne.

“Commercial aircraft are complex machines,” he said. “So I don’t know how he achieved the experience that he did.”

Authorities believe Russell was the only person aboard the airplane. “But of course we haven’t confirmed that at the crash site,” said Jay S. Tabb Jr., the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Seattle division.

Asked about Russell’s mental state, Tabb said, “It’s way too early to comment on that. I’m sorry.”

The Pierce County Sheriff’s Department on Friday night speculated Russell may have crashed the plane intentionally.

According to sheriff’s spokesman Ed Troyer, that theory was based on Russell’s recorded conversation with air traffic control and at least one pilot who were trying to talk the man they called “Rich” into a safe landing.

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