The search continues for a missing 5-year-old boy in San Luis Obispo County who was swept away by raging floodwaters during a storm near San Miguel Monday.
NBC4 spoke exclusively with the boy’s parents.
As torrential rain hammered the Central Coast Monday Lindsy Doan was driving her 5-year-old son Kyle to Kindergarten.
“Kyle had told me, ‘It’s ok, everything will be ok,’” Lindsy said.
At one point they hit a dip on a flooded road near San Miguel.
“So when I went into the dip I realized that I had made a mistake because it was filled on the bottom and my car started to drift and it drifted and it crashed into two trees,” Lindsy said.
After they hit the trees, water was rising fast.
“He took off his seat belt and I told him to come out my door,” Lindsy said. “He came toward me and the currents were so strong that when I tried to hold his hand, my hand wrapped around the tree and then the current pulled him away from me.”
Neighbors were able to help Doan escape, but Kyle, wearing this black puffer jacket, drifted away.
“Kyle was drifting down the river and I could see his head bobbing on the top of the river,” Lindsy said.
He hasn’t been seen since.
“It’s so surreal to know that he’s not there right now,” said Brian Doan, Kyle’s father.
Brian is a substitute teacher and he learned the news as he arrived at school.
“I immediately am trying to maintain composure off what she is saying. ‘I lost Kyle. I can’t find Kyle’. I’m thinking ‘What’s going on,’” Brian said.
The San Luis Obispo County Sheriff’s Office has led the search.
“We searched yesterday until weather conditions made it impossible for us to continue,” said Tony Cipolla, with the San Luis Obispo County Sheriff’s Office. “We continued that search this morning and we have searched all day. We have just concluded for today, that search, and we still have not located the boy.”
Kyle Doan is an outgoing, clever 5-year-old, the youngest of three children.
“He’s my little guy,” Brian said.
His family hopes you keep all of them in your prayers as they pray for a miracle.
“It’s tough, because I’d love to have him back,” Brian said.
