San Diego smuggling boats crash: 8 dead, 7 missing

San Diego smuggling boats crash: 8 dead, 7 missing

At least eight people were killed when two suspected smuggling boats crashed at Black’s Beach in the Torrey Pines area late Saturday, with at least one of the boats reported to have capsized, officials said.

Few details were released early Sunday but San Diego police reported that eight bodies were recovered from the water off La Jolla Farms Road, south of Torrey Pines Gliderport.

Thick fog hampered search efforts overnight but Coast Guard and San Diego Fire-Rescue helicopters and a Coast Guard cutter were expected to comb the area for additional victims early Sunday.

“We couldn’t get any helicopters up. We had boats in the water, but at first light, once all the conditions clear, we will have Coast Guard out here and San Diego Fire-Rescue and lifeguards doing a joint search through the water for any possible victims that are left,” Daniel Eddy, San Diego Fire-Rescue’s deputy chief of operations, told OnScene TV.

Eddy said he didn’t know how many people came to shore or how many victims had been found “because it keeps changing on us.”

He said there was an 800-yard-long debris field on Black’s Beach. Black’s Beach is jointly owned by the city of San Diego and the state. The stretch of sand is also known as Torrey Pines City Beach and Torrey Pines State Beach.

“We tried to launch helicopters both from San Diego Fire and Coast Guard but due to the conditions, they couldn’t get up,” Eddy said. “Coast Guard finally got up with their copter but due to the conditions of the fog in the area it was hard for their (forward-looking thermal imaging cameras) to get through to see anything in the water.

“We are hoping at first light we will have better conditions to get everybody out there.”

He said a Coast Guard frigate was being deployed to the area. City and state lifeguards, San Diego police and Customs and Border Protection officers also responded.

San Diego police learned about the incident shortly after 11:30 p.m. when a woman called 911 to report she had come from Mexico via boat and that one of the boats had overturned, police Officer Sarah Foster said. The woman told dispatchers nine or 10 people might be in the water from the vessel that capsized.

According to the caller, eight people traveling on the boat she was on had made it to shore, Foster said.

Police and lifeguards responded and Border Patrol was notified of the call, she said.

A Border Patrol spokesman said he had no information about the incident and said he did not know of anyone detained from the scene.

This story originally appeared in San Diego Union-Tribune.

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