Kent Police officer recounts Lake Meridian pilot rescue

Kent Police Officer Taylor Burns hadn’t even finished his cup of coffee as he entered his police vehicle and heard a call on the dispatch radio.

“My ears perked up when they said a plane was in the water,” Burns said as he recalled the Aug. 24 crash of a seaplane into Lake Meridian in a recent Kent Police video interview about the incident. “I knew a plane crash was an all hands on deck kind of response.”

It turned out that Burns was the first officer on the scene, although two firefighters and a couple of residents already had responded. Dispatch reported the crash on the north end of the lake, so Burns tried to find the quickest road to get there.

“There are a lot of streets in and out of there,” Burns said. “At the north end there was a private beach. …I said a couple of prayers on the way there, as I do on most calls.”

Burns parked his vehicle and peaked over a fence where he saw a man putting a boat in the water to go help on the overcast and rainy Saturday morning. The man shouted to him, “You want a ride out there?”

Burns jumped into the boat. As they reached the upside down plane with the cockpit underwater, Burns decided he needed to go into the water, which meant taking his gun and uniform off as he stripped down to his T-shirt and underwear.

A Puget Sound Fire firefighter already was in the water, trying to figure out how to break the plane’s window to get to the pilot.

“Every dive felt like 10 to 15 minutes. …but it was more like 10 or 15 seconds,” Burns said.

Several Lake Meridian residents had gone out to the plane in their boats. A woman handed Burns a hammer to help break the window.

“The plane was upside down, underwater, it’s dark, and I had no goggles,” Burns said.

A firefighter got the window on the door open and the door unlatched before having to return to the surface. Burns went back down.

“I braced my legs on the wing of the plane and got the door open,” Burns said. “I grabbed the guy inside and pulled him out, but I needed oxygen. I got him about 60% out, and told the guys I got him almost all the way out.”

Burns returned to the surface.

“I took a couple of huge breaths and they were coming up with him,” Burns said.

They took the man to a police patrol boat that Kent officers Randy Brennan and Roland Heyne had brought to the plane.

“I was yelling, ‘give me goggles’ so I could see if anyone else was in the plane,” Burns said. “I swam down and went into the cockpit of the plane. It was not super clear water and super dark. I hooked my foot on the door, but I couldn’t see anything so I touched the side of the wall and back of the cockpit and grid searched with my hands.

“I came up gasping for air, saw the fire captain and told him nobody else was in the plane.”

The fire captain said it would be good to verify that with two sets of eyes, so he went back down and saw nobody else on board.

The other officers took the pilot to shore where paramedics treated him before he was taken to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle.

Despite the efforts done in about 18 minutes, pilot Alan L. Williams, 74, of Kent, who was alone on the seaplane, died Aug. 29 from injuries suffered in the 10:10 a.m. Aug. 24 crash of a Cessna A185F. Lake Meridian Park is at 14800 SE 272nd St. Williams lived in the Lake Meridian neighborhood.

The plane had its landing gear down when it should have been retracted for a water landing, according to the preliminary crash report issued Sept. 14 by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB).

Following the rescue, Burns got a boat ride back to shore.

“Then I took a nice long stroll back to my car, and sort of got dressed again,” he said.

Burns said residents didn’t hesitate to help rescue the pilot.

“People on the lake were just enjoying coffee on a Saturday morning,” Burns said. “Not only did everybody drop what they were doing, they jumped in boats and went to the plane. Three or four people were in the water when I showed up.”

Burns said other people contributed to the rescue.

“I was just one of many,” he said. “There had been about a 5-to-10-minute delay from getting the call and getting there. The fire guys were incredible, and whoever handed out the hammer helped get us in the plane. Plenty of people who risked possibly more than I did went to get him out of the plane.”

The efforts of others impressed Burns.

“To those who went in water first, thank you,” he said. “That man’s family got a chance to say goodbye because of good teamwork, citizens pointing out where the plane went down. Nobody sat around, people took action. If everybody acted that way everyday, the world would be a lot better place.”

Burns receives top honor

Because of his heroic efforts during the Lake Meridian pilot rescue, Chief Rafael Padilla presented Burns on Oct. 11 in a special ceremony the Kent Police Department Medal of Honor.

“The Medal of Honor is the highest award presented by the department,” Padilla said while reading the policy of giving out the award. “It shall be awarded only in those exceptional cases where employees perform an act of heroism that is above and beyond the normal call of duty and is performed at extreme risk of personal safety.”

Padilla said the award has only been given out one other time in the 135-year history of the department. Officer Chris Sprague received the honor in 2006 for his efforts during a 2005 SWAT call when he placed himself in grave danger while defending others during the pursuit of an armed robbery/kidnapping suspect.

Burns began working for the Kent Police in April 2017. Before he came to Kent, he was an active duty master-at-arms in the U.S. Navy for 10 years, according to Kent Police. That duty includes law enforcement for the Navy, similar to the military police for the Army.

“There comes rare instances where one of us is faced with the highest demands of our mission, putting our life on the line to help someone else,” Padilla said during his Oct. 15 Public Safety Report to the City Council. “Taylor answered that call.”

Officer Taylor Burns wears the Kent Police Department Medal of Honor. COURTESY PHOTO, Kent Police