Authorities identify teen found dead after boat carrying six passengers capsized off Sonoma coast

A teenage boy was found dead Sunday afternoon after a recreational boat carried him and five other people capsized a day earlier off the coast of Sonoma County was a high school football lineman and victim of a 2017 mass shooting in Rancho Tehama.

According to the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office, a search team found the body of Johnny Phommathep II, 17, of Corning, in the waters off Bodega Bay around noon.

Phommathep was one of six people aboard a 20-foot Bayliner recreational boat that left the Westside Regional Park boat launch in Bodega Bay around 3 p.m. Saturday.

Saturday was the first day of the recreational Dungeness crab season and the group, consisting of five family members and a family friend, went crabbing.

The Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office Coroner’s Bureau identified Phommathep Monday evening, but did not confirm the relationship between the family members.

A GoFundMe memorial fundraiser started for Phommathep’s family, but identifies three of the victims as a father and two sons.

Just after 10pm on Saturday, someone associated with the group called authorities to report the boat, which was due back around 7pm, as missing. Officers on the shore pinged the cell phone of one of the boaters and he returned about 7 miles from Carmet Beach.

Authorities from multiple agencies, including the Sheriff’s Office, the Coast Guard and the California Air National Guard, searched the area Saturday evening and all day Sunday. Authorities found Phommathep’s body and found an 11-year-old boy alive.

The 11-year-old boy somehow ended up on Highway 1 Sunday morning, where a motorist found him. He was taken to a local hospital.

The other four people from the boat are still missing, although the search has now been suspended. According to GoFundMe, two of them are Phommathep’s father, a military veteran and volunteer firefighter, and a brother.

The person who created the GoFundMe identified herself as the school secretary at Rancho Tehama Elementary and a family friend.

“I am raising money to help Tiffany, a loving wife and mother, lay her husband and two sons to rest following a tragic boating accident that occurred on November 2 in Bodega Bay,” reads the description on the fundraiser. “I am also trying to raise money to help Tiffany support her newborn and surviving children.”

Phommathep was a lineman on the Corning High School football team, the team selection shows. He was also shot twice in the calf during a 2017 mass shooting that left five people dead in Rancho Tehama. according to the Los Angeles Times.

His mother, Tiffany, was driving him and two of his brothers to school on the morning of Nov. 14, 2017, when the gunman, Kevin Janson Neal, rear-ended him, crashing into their pickup and pulling over to the driver’s side while shooting. a gun.

Phommathep’s mother, Tiffany Phommathep, was shot through her torso and four times on the back of her left shoulder. One bullet narrowly missed her heart, while the other lodged in her intestine.

Tiffany Phommathep used her body to protect Johnny Phommathep II, who was sitting in the front seat. Her 6-year-old son was shot in the foot and her 2-year-old son was cut by glass.

The boat with Johnny Phommathep II in Sonoma County was Saturday one of two that sank since Saturday.

A hiker witnessed it on Sunday a boat carrying two men that capsized near Mussel Point. One man was found unconscious and pronounced dead after firefighters attempted life-saving measures.

The second man has not yet been found.

You can reach staff writer Madison Smalstig at [email protected]. On X (Twitter) @madi.smals.