California boy who survived fatal boating accident tells scary story

Juladi Khammoungkhoune survived a fatal boat accident by floating around in a cooler for hours. His father and four others, including two teenagers who survived a mass shooting in 2017, did not make it.

Thirteen-year-old Juladi Khammoungkhoune was all alone, floating in the Pacific Ocean in a cooler that his father held on to for as long as he could before disappearing into the sea.

Juladi was not an experienced swimmer and had just experienced it a terrible capsizing killing the three adults and two other children he was with in the waters off the coast of Northern California.

In an interview with USA TODAY this week, Juladi – who goes by Jude – said he was frozen and terrified after seeing his father for the last time.

“I thought I was going to die,” Jude told USA TODAY. “I didn’t know if I would go back to surfing because I can’t really swim.”

Jude had gone crabbing on November 2 aboard a 20-foot white Bayliner boat. He, his father, his uncle, two young cousins and an adult family friend were reported missing around 10:20 pm that day. failed to return to shore in Sonoma County, north of San Francisco.

The body of Jude’s 17-year-old cousin, Johnny Phommathep II, washed up on the beach the next day. The remaining four boaters were lost at sea, and the US Coast Guard ended the 57-hour search around 6:30 PM on November 3.

The unimaginable happens: only one boy is left alive

Jude said he would go boating every week with his father, Prasong, known to his family as Song, in the small coastal town Bodega Bay. He said he has never seen such intense waves as on the day of the tragedy.

The details are a bit unclear, but Jude remembers water pouring into the boat through the windows and the hoop net breaking. The boat soon capsized.

Jude said his dad was hanging on the side of the cooler and decided to get in.

“Most of my cousins are on the boat and some of them have already drifted away. I just had to go with my dad because he knew more, knew a lot about survival than I did,” Jude said. “And I just wanted to be with my dad so we could do this together.”

Tragically, Song couldn’t hang on to the cooler long enough. Jude spent hours alone in the dark and cold.

“My dad wasn’t with me and it got a lot colder and windier,” he said.

Jude washed up on an empty beach in the dark

Hours later, Jude washed up on shore and waited for sunrise to climb a hill and head for a roadway. He flagged down a passerby who took him to a campsite and gave him a new set of clothes and hot chocolate.

He was later taken to a hospital where he was reunited with his mother Yathida, 42, sister Marissa, 8, and brother, 7. According to Shanice Khammoungkhoune, Song’s sister, he suffered no health problems.

Shanice said her nephew is slowly rehabilitating to life without his father and returned to school on Tuesday. He has become the man of the family, helping his mother and two younger siblings, who do not yet fully understand the tragedy.

‘The little ones don’t really seem to know much. They know their father is not there, but they don’t understand it like he does,” she said.

Jude said he’s taking life day by day, adding that he’s “building up to being a little happier. A little sad but happy sometimes.”

A funeral without a body

A vigil will be held Saturday, November 16 at 6:00 PM at the Westside Regional Park and Campground in Bodega Bay. The ceremony will honor Prasong, his lifelong friend Matthew Ong, 42, his cousin Johnny, 41, and Johnny’s two sons: Johnny Jr. ., 17, and Jake, 14. (The teens had previously survived a mass shooting in California in 2017.)

“If you have a body, there’s a funeral. You do a memorial and all that. Like we don’t even know where to start,” Shanice said.

Shanice said the family invites anyone who has lost a loved one to participate in the ceremony.

A GoFundMe page as Jude’s family had raised more than $61,000 as of Friday afternoon. Shanice said donations will go toward supporting Song’s wife and three children in both the short and long term.