A body has been pulled from San Francisco Bay as investigators continue to piece together a fatal boating accident near Alcatraz, where a cabin cruiser with 20 people aboard sank earlier this week amid rough water conditions.
According to San Francisco police, officers with the department’s Marine Unit recovered the body around 1:02 p.m. Thursday after another boat reported seeing a person in the water west of Treasure Island.
At the time, the marine crew had been using sonar equipment to search for the sunken vessel when they were directed to the discovery.
The person was declared dead at the scene. Officials said the San Francisco Office of the Chief Medical Examiner will work to confirm the individual’s identity and notify family members before any name is made public.
Authorities have not yet said whether the recovered body belongs to one of the passengers from the Volare, a 49-foot cabin cruiser that sank Tuesday afternoon about 600 yards off Alcatraz Island.
The Volare was carrying 20 people when it went down, leaving one person confirmed dead, 16 others rescued and three people still missing. Officials earlier identified the confirmed victim as 79-year-old Clifford Joseph Boisa of Sutter County, a retired reserve deputy with the Sutter County Sheriff’s Office.
The disaster occurred in the stretch of bay between Alcatraz Island and the Golden Gate Bridge, after the boat reportedly began taking on water and then slipped beneath the surface. Early emergency dispatches raised the possibility of a fire on board, but the San Francisco Fire Department later said there was no evidence that a fire had occurred.
By the time rescue teams reached the scene, the boat was mostly underwater, with only a portion of its upper deck still visible above San Francisco Bay.
Officials said many of those aboard were members of an extended family who had gathered for a memorial service that included scattering a loved one’s ashes in the bay.
According to authorities, none of the passengers rescued from the water were wearing life jackets, and most injuries resulted from the violent plunge into the cold bay waters. One dog also died in the incident.
The U.S. Coast Guard suspended its active search Wednesday evening after crews spent nearly 24 hours searching approximately 950 square nautical miles using boats, aircraft, thermal imaging and tide modeling.
Officials acknowledged there remained a strong possibility that some passengers had become trapped inside the vessel when it sank.
Investigators have not yet determined what caused the Volare to sink. San Francisco police said Marine Unit officers will continue efforts to locate the submerged vessel as the investigation into one of the bay’s deadliest boating tragedies in recent years continues.
