Jetties

The bodies of two men were found Wednesday within 100 yards of each other near the Santa Ana River jetty at Huntington State Beach, Sheriff's Lt. Dick Olson said. "It does not appear that these cases are related," Olson said. "It's just one of those odd things that happen." The first body--an older man with a bullet wound to the head--was discovered by two surfers shortly after 6 a.m., Olson said.

The body of a man described by authorities as a transient was found late Wednesday off Dana Point Harbor. A kayaker paddling about a half-mile west of the jetty found the body of Jeff Collard, 48, at 4:48 p.m. Wednesday, said Lt. Lloyd Downing, a spokesman for the Orange County Sheriff's Department. The death has been tentatively ruled an accidental drowning, Downing said. Collard was known to authorities as a transient who frequented Orange County's southern coast.

A 22-foot sailboat crashed into the 1st Street jetty Saturday night, slightly injuring a passenger, police said Sunday. The boat's skipper, Douglas Hickle, 32, of Norwalk, was arrested on suspicion of operating the craft while intoxicated and taken to the Seal Beach police lockup, police said. Authorities received an emergency call at 9:38 p.m. as the boat went out of control. Four agencies responded, including harbor patrols from Orange County and Long Beach, Seal Beach police and lifeguards.

A single-engine airplane crashed into the ocean about three miles off Newport Beach Friday when the pilot lost control while circling above a sailboat race, authorities said. Pilot Robert Schmidt, 58, and passenger Geraldine Conser, 44, were able to crawl out of their Cessna 150 and were rescued by a private boater, Kenny Knight of Newport Beach, who witnessed the 1:30 p.m. crash off the Santa Ana River jetty. Newport Beach Marine Safety Capt.

The owner of a 39-foot cabin cruiser remained hospitalized Friday after his boat rammed into a stone jetty at the Newport Bay harbor entrance and sank in about 20 feet of water, sheriff's officials said. The owner of the $270,000 boat, named Ferrari, was identified as Leland West, 50, of Newport Beach, said Sheriff's Lt. Richard J. Olson. West is the owner of Newport Imports.

A sheriff's rescue diver was rushed to a hospital with leg injuries Friday after becoming entangled in a sunken sailboat while searching the wreckage for its missing owner. Deputy Ken Kropidlowski, an 18-year veteran of the Orange County Sheriff's Department and a member of its dive team, was 30-feet deep off a jetty in Newport Beach when he got tangled in debris about 11 a.m. and made an emergency ascent, Jim Amormino, a sheriff's spokesman, said.

After two days of searching, police think they have identified the two people who were swept into the Pacific on Tuesday off a rocky jetty in Corona del Mar. Sean Shungfei Yeh, 53, of Fremont and Yi Ni Kwong, 49, of Irvine are presumed drowned, though no bodies have been found, Newport Beach Police Sgt. Evan Sailor said. Police said they found a 2000 Toyota Camry that was registered to Kwong in a beach parking lot.

The 110-foot Seattle-based fishing boat Sea View sank about five miles west of Newport late Sunday, but its crew of five was rescued, the Coast Guard said. The vessel ran into the north jetty of Yaquina Bay at about 6:50 p.m., Coast Guard spokesman Dennis Schaefer said.

The body of a man missing since Saturday has been found wedged into a jetty in the ocean off Seal Beach, authorities said. Danny Robert Castro, 21, was found in the jetty between Surfside and Anderson Avenue, about 30 blocks from where he had disappeared four days earlier during a family outing at Sunset Beach. "We knew he was going to float up somewhere; it was just a matter of where," said Lt.

A pipe bomb was recovered from the rock jetty near the beach park at Channel Islands Harbor on Monday, authorities said. Two men who were spearfishing found the device about seven feet underwater on an area of the jetty about 200 yards from the beach and alerted authorities around 3:30 p.m., a U.S. Coast Guard spokesman said. The area, crowded with kayakers and others enjoying the holiday weekend, was cordoned off and Navy divers retrieved the device.