Man from Florida takes plane on 15-mile joyride, crashes and walks off, CA cops say

A man crashed a small, stolen plane onto the sand of a California beach, deputies say.

The crash onto a Half Moon Bay beach a little before 5 p.m. on Feb. 8 wasn’t lethal, deputies said. And, with the aircraft’s tail still diagonal to the sand, the “pilot” climbed out and walked away, a witness told the San Mateo County Sheriff’s Office.

A plane with its nose in the sand was the strange sight the sheriff’s deputies arrived to not long after. It turned out, the plane had been stolen from an airport in Palo Alto, about 15 miles away, the sheriff’s office said.

Law enforcement began searching the area. Soon, they encountered a 50-year-old man from Miami, Florida, who matched the description given to them by the witness. The sheriff took him into custody on a theft of an airplane charge.

“The San Mateo County Sheriff’s Office is working with the Palo Alto Police Department on this case,” the sheriff’s office said in a Feb. 8 news release. “Together we are actively investigating the theft and recovery of the airplane.”

This story was originally published February 9, 2024 at 1:32 PM with the headline "Man from Florida takes plane on 15-mile joyride, crashes and walks off, CA cops say."