‘Large white object’ in Kings River believed to be the car of two more missing tourists

Spotters in a helicopter have found a large white object submerged in the turbulent Kings River east of Fresno that may be the car of two tourists missing for more than a week, the California Highway Patrol said Monday.

It would be the second tourist car lost in less than a month on a treacherous stretch of Highway 180 through Forest Service land. Four tourists are now thought to have plunged to their deaths in the swollen Kings River near Convict Flat, and search and rescue crews have so far been unable to retrieve their vehicles or their bodies.

Yinan Wang, 31, and his wife Jie Song, 30, were last seen about 2 p.m. Aug. 6 at the junction of Crystal Cave Road and the Generals Highway. They were scheduled to stay a night in Fresno before going to Yosemite and then back home to San Diego on Aug. 9.

The couple, who are both Chinese nationals, were driving a white Ford Focus.

Fresno County Sheriff’s Office search and rescue team members in the CHP’s helicopter “observed a large white object below the water line,” a CHP news release states. The spotters could not see if any occupants were in the white object or see a license plate.

The large white object in the water is near another car that went over the edge last month and is still visible in the river. That car is believed to contain the bodies of two tourists from Thailand who have been reported missing.

Fresno County officials on Monday were meeting in Fresno with leaders of the Thai community of Southern California to talk about efforts to recover the bodies believed to be those of two Thai tourists whose car ran off a steep cliff on Highway 180 and into Kings River on July 26. The car remains stuck in the river and the sheriff’s office reports that two bodies are inside.

While their identities haven’t been confirmed, a letter from a family member to the U.S. Embassy in Thailand named them as Pakapol Chairatnathrongporn, 28, and Thiwadee Saengsuriyarit, 24, exchange students attending the University of South Florida.

Fresno County Supervisor Nathan Magsig, who was involved in the meetings, said the Southern California contingent thanked the sheriff’s office for the work it has been doing to retrieve the bodies.

Tanee Sangrat, counsel-general for the Thai Consulate in Los Angeles, said the visit was an opportunity for the Thai community to “pay their condolences to the victims and express their support for officials.”

He said the Thai community and families of the man and woman in the car know county officials are working around the clock, which is why they wanted to offer their support.

“They also wanted to get briefings and details from the rescue teams because the news is being followed very closely in the Thai community and in Thailand,” Sangrat said. “They want it to be done quickly but very safely for the rescue teams.”

Sangrat said he is hopeful that the water levels will recede enough by Tuesday or Wednesday for recovery teams to consider removing the car and the bodies inside from the river.

Both cars went over the edge about 50 feet from each other, sheriff’s spokesman Tony Botti said.

The river is moving too swiftly for rescuers to safely remove the bodies in the red car, Botti said. The river is moving about 600 cubic feet per second and search and rescue is waiting for it to recede to 400 cubic feet per second, he said.

Once that happens, search and rescue deputies hope to move the Thai students’ car to a slower part of the river to make it safer to remove the bodies.

Rescue crews were already trying to determine the best way to retrieve the red car when the keen eye of a Fresno County sheriff’s deputy provided a potential break in the search for the missing San Diego couple driving the white Ford Focus in Sequoia National Park.

The deputy was watching local television coverage Aug. 8 of the attempted recovery of the red car from the river when she saw a California license plate in the brush that read 6XMM431. The deputy knew the plate didn’t belong to the Thai students’ rental car, and a records check showed it belonged to a 2012 Ford Focus. Three days later, the sheriff’s office was notified that the couple was missing. They were last seen driving a 2012 white Ford Focus with the same license plate.

On Saturday, the sheriff’s office and California Highway Patrol both flew helicopters above the canyon where the red car remains in the river to see if there were any signs of a white car. They found some vehicle parts in the river about 40 yards upstream from the red car, but at that point deputies were unable to determine if the parts belong to the white Ford Focus.

Deputies are now working a parallel investigation involving the Ford Focus as they continue efforts to develop a plan to recover the red car belonging to the Thai students.

Meanwhile, Caltrans has launched a traffic investigation to examine whether there’s a pattern of vehicles crashing along that stretch of Highway 180. That investigation, launched after the Thai students’ accident, is expected to take two months.

This story was originally published August 14, 2017 at 12:21 PM with the headline "‘Large white object’ in Kings River believed to be the car of two more missing tourists."