What should have been a scenic hot air balloon ride over the Dutch countryside of Beuningen took a nail-biting turn when its passengers had to take cover from gunfire.
On Wednesday evening, a pilot and five passengers were allegedly shot at while their hot air balloon flew over a residential area in the east of the Netherlands.
Monique Hoogeslag, the hot air balloon’s owner, spoke to regional broadcaster RTV Oost about the incident: “There were three adults in the garden, two men and a woman. They shouted ‘homos!'”
“A man then grabbed an air rifle [and] he shot directly at the people on board.”
The gunman allegedly fired several shots
Reports vary on the number of shots the man is believed to have fired, with one of the passengers claiming to have heard three and another five.
Thankfully, no one was hurt in the incident. However, the pilot was forced to make an emergency landing after the shooting, in a bid to avoid the potential chaos of the balloon crash landing in a residential area.
“The balloon doesn’t come down immediately if there is a hole in it,” Hoogeslag explained, “but we could have hit people.”
A police investigation into the incident is still ongoing.
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