The privately owned island is forested with a few homes toward the north end. Ketron Island, where a stolen Horizon Air plane crashed Friday evening, is located in south Puget Sound between Anderson Island and Steilacoom on the mainland. American explorer Charles Wilkes discovered the 221-acre island during the Wilkes Expedition of 1838-1842. The privately owned island is forested with a few homes toward the north end. According to the 2010 U.S. Census, 17 people live on the island.<doc-sep>Towboat operator Ryan Johnson with Western Towboat Company was on his vessel near DuPont Friday night, preparing to take out two barges as the sun was setting. Suddenly, a passenger airplane buzzed over them followed by two military jets. RELATED: Plane stolen from Sea-Tac, crashes on island in Puget Sound “It flew right over us,” Johnson told KTTH Radio’s Jason Rantz. “I didn’t think too much of it. It was a weird noise and I wasn’t following the news at that time. We heard a loud bang, turned around and we saw the black smoke coming from the island there.” “Right before that, my deckhand saw the plane bank, and that was the last he saw of it because it went on the other side of the tug boat,” he said. Johnson’s crew hadn’t heard the news yet; that a Horizon turboprop airplane was stolen from Sea-Tac Airport, reportedly by a suicidal employee, and was cruising over Puget Sound with two F-15 military jets in pursuit. All they knew at that time was that a plane had crashed on a small island with a handful of residents nearby. It spurred them into action, dropping everything to get to the island to see if they could help. “We immediately fired up the boat and went and checked it out and tried to help out as best we could,” Johnson said. “We weren’t really able to do much. But we didn’t know the plane was hijacked, so we were more concerned if there were people onboard, how big the fire was, and warning people on the island that might not have known what had happened.” Eventually, the crew found out through text messages and social media that the plane was stolen. Johnson got on the radio with the Coast Guard and reported where the plane had crashed. PHOTOS: Airplane stolen from Sea-Tac He estimates that fire crews and other first responders arrived on the shore about 15 minutes after the crash. But they still had to get to the island. “But there was no vehicle to get up there, and they had to wait for the ferry to get over, so 40 minutes maybe,” Johnson said. “It’s in a remote area to get to. It’s not an easy place to get to because the ferry only goes from (the mainland) to Anderson Island, and you have to call, maybe, to get off (Ketron) Island.” Johnson’s crew got onto the island via the ferry dock and started knocking on doors. “I think there’s 13 houses,” Johnson said. “And my crew knocked on a bunch of houses, like five, and no one was there. They got a hold of some ladies there. And they found a gentleman who heard about it and they drove around with him to find it.” By that time, the ferry with first responders was coming to the island so the tow boat had to move. The crew boarded and moved aside. They reported that the crash couldn’t even be seen from the road. They could see the flames far off in the distance, however. Former FBI agent says, ‘Greatest threat we have to aviation is the insider threat’ “It was that remote,” Johnson said. “When we were going to the ferry dock, we had to go past the south end and we could see the fire going. Ketron Island has some large cliffs on it, 250 feet maybe. When we were going by, we could see the fire going … we could see the fire started and were hoping it wouldn’t take off and destroy the island there.” “It’s a bizarre event that happened,” he said. “Obviously, the pilot got (killed) … we kind of got lucky with that; it could have been a lot worse. I wish we could get people help before it gets to this point, ya know.” Listen to the Jason Rantz Show weekdays 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. on AM 770 KTTH Radio.<doc-sep>
⧫ Peter Puget of the Royal Navy called the island "Long Island" when he surveyed the southern area of Puget Sound in 1792, according to the Tacoma Digital Library's collection. ⧫ The island was once known as Gove Island when Captain Warren Gove lived there, according to the Tacoma Digital Library's collection. ⧫ It was named Kittson Island by Charles Wilkes, an American naval officer, during the late 1830s. William Kittson was an employee of the Hudson's Bay Company who supervised the construction of Fort Nisqually in 1833, according to the book "Washington State Place Names" by James W. Phillips. ⧫ The island was misspelled as “Ketron” by Wilkes’ cartographers. ⧫ In 1926, the island was bought by the Ketron Island Fur Company for $15,000, according to a report by the Chelahis (Washington) Bee-Nugget newspaper. The company used the island to establish a fox fur industry, the newspaper reported. ⧫The island is only accessible by a ferry from Pierce County that arrives four times a day. The closest mainland city is Steilacoom. There are no stores or mail delivery on the island. ⧫ In May 1942, The Associated Press reported that an army bomber crashed near Ketron Island and sank, killing its three-member crew. ⧫ J.C. Morris, an entrepreneur from Anchorage, Alaska, bought the island in 1946. He wanted to build 200 homes on the island but was thwarted by the high cost of installing sewer lines. Morris' mansion, built in the 1960s, was designed in a style that borrowed from architect Frank Lloyd Wright. Marion Chenaur and her husband bought the mansion in 1990. She sold the property in 2015 to Nicole Pham and her husband Jim Porter, who were restaurateurs in Thurston County, Washington.