Witness describes Kamloops' Snowbird jet crash scene

Photo: Braden Capostinsky

The tail of a crashed Snowbirds plane lies on Kamloops Glenview Avenue.

“Surreal.”

“Disbelief.”

“Chaotic.”

These are just some of the words 22-year-old Braden Capostinsky used to describe the moment when a Snowbirds plane crashed into a home across the street from him on Kamloops' Glenview Avenue.

Just before noon Sunday, Capostinsky heard the Snowbirds' flying near his house, just east of the Kamloops Airport. After putting on a show over Kamloops Saturday, Capostinsky stepped out on his back porch to catch a glimpse of more aerial acrobatics. Instead he witnessed a horrific crash.

“It was like out of a movie. You look up and you see it's coming really quick in your direction and I said 'Holy F, holy F,' and turned,” he told Castanet, just two hours later. “Once I saw the plane shield come off and the pilot eject I just turned and grabbed my mom and girlfriend and waited for the boom.”

The plane hit 2454 Glenview Avenue, across the street from Capostinsky, and pieces of the plane skidded across the road, tearing down power lines and setting small patches of lawn ablaze. The home that was initially struck caught fire, but miraculously, no one was inside at the time.

“Very chaotic. There was some screaming ... people were just freaking out, not sure what happened,” Capostinsky said. “Some people thought they were getting bombed so they didn't know if there was more coming, so they were actually running. It was crazy.”

Capostinsky, a former wildfire firefighter, quickly grabbed his neighbour's hose and began dousing some spot fires, while keeping people clear of the downed power lines. 

When he first saw the plane coming towards his neighbourhood, Capostinsky could clearly see the pilot eject from the plane as it was already nose diving towards the ground.

“So he didn't really shoot up, he kind of shot out and forward, and he ended up [on a roof] behind my house,” Capostinsky said. “I'm not 100 per cent sure what happened with the pilot. I could see him on the roof actually from my back deck where he landed. I saw paramedics up there with him and it didn't look like it was going great.”

Sunday afternoon, Health Minister Adrian Dix confirmed one person was taken from the scene to the Royal Inland Hospital. While there are unconfirmed reports of a single fatality in the crash, Capostinsky said no one who was on the ground in his neighbourhood was hit by any of the falling shrapnel.

The Snowbirds were en route to Comox Sunday, after spending the first half of May touring Canada as part of  "Operation Inspiration," as a "salute to Canadians doing their part to fight the spread of COVID-19."

The cause of the crash is still unknown.