An incredibly strange story out of Washington State. An airline employee stole an empty plane from Seattle's Sea-Tac Airport Friday night. With military jets right behind him, he tried out aerial maneuvers. The 29-year-old man flew for an hour, but crashed into a wooded area about 64 kilometers from the airport. He has been identified as Richard Russell. The Pierce County's sheriff's department says he was suicidal, but didn't provide specific evidence to support that assessment. Victor Blackwell takes a closer look at what happened.  

"There's a ground stop no one is departing right now. They are working out an issue close to our air space."

With those words to airline pilots- Washington State's Seattle- Tacoma Airport- known as Sea-Tac, came to a halt. After what's being called "an unauthorized take-off" of a Q400 Turboprop plane from horizon air, owned by the Alaska Air Group. The company's COO said in a video statement that the aircraft was taken by a single horizon air employee and no passengers were on board. The Pierce County sheriff said Richard Russell the man was a 29 year-old ground service agent. What happened next was a bizarre display in the skies above south Puget Sound. The agent was in touch with air traffic controllers and apparently preforming stunts in the 70-seater plane. They tried to talk him down to a safe landing.

"Congratulations. You did that. Now let's turn and land that airplane safely and not hurt anyone on the ground."

"All right. I don't know man. I don't know. I don't want to. I was kinda hoping that was gonna be it, you know."

Air national guard jets were scrambled and Washington's governor Jay Inslee tweeted that "Fighter pilots flew alongside the aircraft and were ready to do whatever was need to protect citizens."

But in the end, he said the man flying the stolen plane crashed. Pictures from CNN Affiliate KOMO showed flaming debris on nearby Ketron Island- the site of the crash.

BRENDA LEECH STEILACOOM RESIDENT "The plane literally at that moment was flying right over our deck. And right behind it was F-15s. We've never seen a plane that low over our deck before and shortly thereafter we saw a giant plume of black smoke out in the distance."