It was August 10th, 2018, a warm, clear evening nearly two decades after 9/11. Inside the SeaTac terminals, the indignities of airport security were in full force: Transportation Security Administration agents were X-raying shoes, forcing travelers to toss out tubes of toothpaste, and palpating passengers’ private parts with the backs of blue-gloved hands to guard against box cutters being smuggled in their bras or briefs. But no one was keeping tabs on Russell.
Tac, underscores that only Russell’s short sprint back to the moving airplane would have raised alarms. “Even if the guard . . . had witnessed these actions,” it reads, “the time frame was too short to have precluded the Horizon employee’s entry to the cabin of the aircraft.” An Alaska Airlines pilot cut in on the radio: “That aircraft is taking off rolling,” he warned. Were the brakes on? “His wheels are smoking left and right,” the pilot said, “just rolling down the runway.”
The Horizon Air Bombardier Dash 8 Q400, part of Alaska Air’s fleet, which was commandeered by Russell.With a shock of half-groomed brown hair and a face full of freckles, Russell was funny, extroverted, “a handful,” relatives would later say; they all had “Beebo stories.” As a high schooler he hosted booze-free bonfires for friends; on his MySpace page, misbehaving looked like shotgunning cans of Mountain Dew with his bros.
Russell landed in Coos Bay, a small timber town on the Oregon coast. He enrolled in Southwestern Oregon Community College, a two-year school with a green, residential campus that attracts many students from the Pacific Rim. God took up space left over by football. Russell was active in Campus Crusade for Christ, an evangelical student group, and volunteered, mentoring high schoolers.
To Schaefers, who’d often pop in for a bite and linger to chat, “both of them just seemed stellar.” But by the end of 2014, Beebo and Hannah had wearied of the isolation of Coos Bay, a six-and-a-half-hour drive from Seattle. To Russell’s chagrin, they chose suburban Sumner, Washington, over Wasilla. “Failing to convince Hannah of Alaska’s greatness,” Russell later wrote, “we settled on Sumner because of its close proximity to her family.
Beebo gave the controller his legal name, “Richard Russell,” and asked for advice: “What do you think I should do, FAA guy?” The controller tried to gauge Russell’s competence: “Just flying the plane around, you seem comfortable with that?” Russell’s braggadocio bounced back: “Oh, hell yeah! It’s a blast, man. I’ve played video games before,” he said, “so, ya know,“Everything’s peachy,” he insisted. “Just did a little circle around Rainier. It’s beautiful.
Honored to have called him my best friend ❤️
What a story.
Chills reading this. Wow.
Is this a real story? Wow that's interesting!
Wow! Un-flippin-believable!!
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