LOUISVILLE, KY — City residents were just getting out of work, starting to think about dinner and otherwise going about their Tuesday when they saw something they still can’t believe.
A UPS cargo plane barreled out of the sky and slammed into a number of businesses on the ground, causing a massive explosion. At least seven people were killed, including all three aboard the plane.
SJ Matthews, a University of Louisville nursing student who was just grabbing dinner at a nearby restaurant and walked outside with his food around 5:15 p.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 4, when he “saw a big cloud of dust.”
“You’d think the world was ending,” the 21-year-old told The Louisville Courier Journal, part of the USA TODAY Network. “I was just shocked, and then I find out a plane crashed and blew up, then my heart ached for the people in the plane.”
Large smoke can be seeing covering the sky over Louisville Nov. 4 after LMPD and multiple other agencies report of a plan crash near Fern Valley and Grade Lane.
Damon Fortner, a long-haul UPS truck driver, told USA TODAY that he saw the plane go down.
He had been driving near the airport to pick up a load of packages when he saw the aircraft fly over a nearby road. “That’s awful low,” he said he thought.
Seconds later it exploded, barely 100 yards from where he stopped his pickup. He watched the plane take down telephone poles and power lines as it left a trail of fire.
“It blew up. And it just kept on. All you could hear was stuff blowing up, and black smoke everywhere,” he said. “You could feel the heat off it.”
All he could think about were the poor souls who were on the plane, he said. “It tears me up.”
This handout photo, courtesy of Levi Dean, shows smoke and flames rising from the site of a UPS cargo plane crash outside Louisville International Airport in Louisville, Kentucky, on Nov. 4, 2025.
Elizabeth Owens first spotted the smoke from the airplane crash around 5:30 p.m. and initially thought it was a storm cloud. Then it reached her neighborhood and surrounded her home.
“I just saw the smoke just coming up pretty fast from the trees, and then it just spread out further, and it just kept going for over an hour,” Owens told The Courier Journal.
She said her family is used to seeing airplanes fly overhead, but she never expected something like this to happen so close.
“We have planes going over our house from UPS all the time,” Owens said. “It’s been kind of scary because of how close it was. It kind of brings those fears to mind that I didn’t really have before, because I’ve never been this close to something so serious that’s happened.”
She spent Tuesday evening sheltering in place with her husband and 11-year-old son.
The crash has killed at least four people and injured 11, though those numbers could increase as the investigation proceeds, officials said at a news conference.
Betsy Ruhe ,who is on the Louisville Metro Council, said at a news conference that the disaster hits the heart of everyone in the city.
“This is a UPS town. My cousin’s a UPS pilot, my tennis partner is a UPS pilot, the intern in my office works overnight at UPS to pay for college,” Ruhe said. “We all know somebody who works at UPS and they’re all texting their friends, their family, trying to make sure everyone is safe. Sadly, some of those texts are probably going to go unanswered.”
Contributing: Olivia Evans, Stephanie Kuzydym, Lillian Metzmeier, Killian Baarlaer, Maggie Menderski, Louisville Courier Journal
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: ‘You’d think the world was ending’: UPS plane crash witnesses in shock
