Search for survivors in human smuggling boat tragedy off Florida coast to be suspended
ABC News
A Coast Guard official said 34 people on the doomed vessel that capsized in the Straits of Florida are unaccounted for.
A massive search for 34 people still unaccounted for from a boat that capsized in the Straits of Florida on Saturday will be suspended at sundown on Thursday after a U.S. Coast Guard official announced there are likely no other survivors.
During a news conference Thursday, Capt. Jo-Ann Burdian, commander of the Sector Miami Coast Guard, said four more bodies were found in the last 24 hours, bringing the total to five bodies recovered since the Coast Guard launched a search on Tuesday morning.
Only one of 40 people believed to have been on what investigators suspect was a human-smuggling vessel was found alive, clinging to the hull of the boat, officials said.
Burdian said search-and-rescue crews have scoured the Straits of Florida from the southern tip of the state to Port Canaveral in the north and have yet to find evidence of any survivors. She said crews have saturated an area as large as Massachusetts "over and over and over again."
