Rescuers searching for missing Indian family find woman's body
15 April 2018 5:34 PM GMT
Washington: A woman's body was found by rescuers in the US during the search of a missing Indian family of four who are feared drowned in a swollen river in California, officials said. An inter-agency search and rescue team in California on Friday also recovered some personal items and numerous parts of a vehicle from a swollen river in which the missing Indian family was travelling last week.
Personal belongings of the four members of the family from Santa Clarita in California, who were believed to be travelling through Humboldt and Mendocino County on US-101 while on a vacation, were also found by the team over a two-day period on Tuesday and Wednesday, officials said.
Sandeep Thottapilly, 41, vice president of the Union Bank on Santa Clarita, and his wife Soumya Thottapilly, 38, were on a road trip along with their two kids –Siddhanth, 12 and Saachi, 9 –in a maroon Honda Pilot from Portland, Oregon to San Jose in Southern California, during which they went missing on April 5.
Authorities, who originally had said the body was a child's, anticipate that an autopsy will be performed early next week.
"Searchers located the deceased body of an adult female approximately seven miles north of the reported crash site (Eel River flows in a northern direction)," California's Mendocino County Sheriff's Office said in a statement.
The body was found on Friday on an exposed terrain which appeared to have covered by the Eel River within the last few days as a result of a recent weather storm which brought heavy rain to the area.
Searchers are looking for the missing family members and their vehicle which is believed to be submerged somewhere in the Eel River.
Meanwhile, the Mendocino County Sheriff's Office and the California Highway Patrol, Garberville Area Office, are continuing their efforts along the South Fork of the Eel River, just north of the town of Leggett California, to locate and recover a vehicle reported to have been submerged in the river on around 1:10 pm on Friday, April 6.
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