Calif. family whose son was swept away in raging flood still searches

It’s been a year of nonstops for the Doan family of Paso Robles. Nonstop disbelief. Nonstop searching. Nonstop second guessing. Nonstop grieving. And now a nonstop legal battle.  

It’s been a year spent trying, and failing, to find their five-year-old son Kyle Doan, who was swept away in a flash flood.  
 
On Jan. 9, 2023, a series of heavy rainstorms led low-lying areas in San Luis Obispo County to flood, resulting in overflowing culverts and hazardous streets. It was a Monday. The weekend’s rains had been unrelenting, and emergency crews were dispatched throughout the county to repair downed power lines, monitor closed roadways and divert traffic when they could. But school was back in session, and Paso Robles resident Lindsy Doan was fighting through the storm on the way to drop her son Kyle off at Lillian Larsen Elementary in San Miguel. 

Like the rest of the region, the streets of San Miguel were hammered by unprecedented amounts of rain. Water rushed through the tiny town in northern San Luis Obispo County anchored by a mission founded there in 1797. Much of the heart of the sleepy agricultural enclave on the edge of Highway 101 was underwater that day, and Lindsy and Kyle quickly found themselves in trouble: trapped in a Chevy Traverse SUV that was suddenly out of her control and being moved by the force of the current flowing over a creek crossing at San Marcos Road — the town’s arterial roadway.  

“I realized I was drifting,” Doan told KSBY on Jan. 11, 2023, as she recalled losing control of the car’s steering and being pinned against a sycamore tree after floating across the road. 
 
Doan said the pair were stuck inside the car as it started to fill up with water.  
 
“I thought the best action would be to leave the car, so I opened my door… Kyle was then strapped to his seatbelt on his booster,” Doan continued. “I told him to climb over to the door that was open, to my door, so he unstrapped his seatbelt. He had his backpack with him. I told him to, ‘Leave your backpack there.’” 
 
As they struggled against the raging floodwaters, Kyle reassured his mother.  
 
“Mom, it’s OK,” he said from the back seat. “Just be calm.” 
 
Those were Kyle’s last words.  

Once the mother and son exited the vehicle, the pair were immediately swept up by the current and, for a moment, Doan gripped her son. “I was able [to] grab onto him, but the current pushed Kyle out and our hands slipped,” Doan recalled. “I saw his head kind of floating and he was looking at me cause he was going backwards for a little bit of time.” 
 
Neil Collins, who owns an orchard next to San Marcos Road with his wife Danielle, was on hand during the incident. Early that morning, the couple had walked from their home down along the banks of the creek, a tributary of the Salinas River, to survey the flood. “This isn’t going to end well for someone,” Collins said he told his wife as soon as they spotted the muddy, raging waters. 
 
A few minutes later, they heard screams.  
 
“I looked at my wife and said, ‘That sounds like a human,’” he recalled. “I heard a second scream and just ran up the river.” 
 
Collins said he saw two people floating down the creek, one appearing “lifeless.” His focus turned to Lindsy, still struggling against the current and also closer to him. He ran along the bank of the rushing waters while his wife called 911 and nearby workers brought a rope. Doan was able to grasp onto some branches to slow her progress, was thrown a lifeline and dragged out of the current. As soon as she reached safety, she realized her son was still out there. 

“They said they had seen Kyle, but he was floating on his back. There was no way they could throw a rope to him because of where he was,” she recalled.  
 
Collins said Lindsy was lucky and estimated if she’d floated downstream another 100 yards, he and those standing by on the creek’s edge wouldn’t have been able to help. “Time was running out,” he said.  
 
A search for the missing boy started immediately.  
 
Multiple area agencies, led by the San Luis Obispo County Sheriff’s Office, went to work deploying dive teams and search and rescue crews. They were soon joined by teams from the Santa Barbara, Ventura, Sacramento, Santa Clara and Kern county sheriffs’ offices. A few days later, the San Luis Obispo County Sheriff’s Office reported that those teams had been joined by “approximately 120 members of the California National Guard,” with 200 searchers from around the state in total. 

The sheriff’s office noted the difficulty of the weather and conditions on the ground at the time. “The search is being conducted in extremely challenging conditions with mud and debris hampering the efforts,” the statement said. “But this is a comprehensive effort to search every brush pile and area of debris.” 
 
But initial efforts, as comprehensive as they were, did not lead to closure. In the weeks following the incident, search personnel from regional, statewide and national agencies lent their time to look for Kyle around the clock, yet he remained missing. 

On Feb. 9, 2023, the one-month anniversary of Kyle’s disappearance, the Doans told KSBY they had reached out to the governor’s office with a request for him to “allow private businesses to use their equipment to remove debris along the Salinas River so search teams may have easier access.” 
 
“I want him [Gov. Gavin Newsom] to imagine his child and what he would do if his child went missing, in which case I’m pretty sure he would move heaven and earth in order to try to figure out where he was,” Lindsy told KSBY, “and I want him to take that into account for Kyle as well because we don’t have the same resources that he does.”
 
Her message seemed to have gotten through, and by mid-February, the governor had stepped in. “Governor Gavin Newsom has directed Cal OES to coordinate the deployment of any and all resources requested by San Luis Obispo to support the ongoing search,” a Feb. 16 statement from the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services read. “…The full weight of state and local government remains behind collective efforts to search for Kyle, and we are committed to supporting the family and community alike.” 
 
The efforts, however, were still unsuccessful, and Kyle’s family started to make public the frustration and strain of not finding their little boy: “Our son is still missing, and the agencies and people in responsible positions haven’t been following through with their rhetoric,” Brian Doan told KSBY on May 5, 2023. 

The search did not stop. In early July, the San Luis Obispo County Sheriff’s Office, along with the San Luis Obispo County Incident Management Team, deployed approximately 300 search and rescue crew members from up and down the state, redoubling their efforts — again.  
 
And then, the legal battle. Lindsy and Brian Doan filed a lawsuit in October seeking damages for wrongful death, negligence, dangerous condition of public property and emotional distress. The defendants named are the City of Paso Robles, Caltrans and the County of San Luis Obispo. “As a direct and proximate result of defendants’ negligence, a breach of duty and failure to take steps to either make the risky conditions safe or warn drivers of the dangerous conditions, all caused Kyle to be swept away by raging floodwaters at the crossing of San Marcos Road and Wellsona Road,” the lawsuit alleges. “Although his body has not yet been located, Kyle is tragically presumed deceased.” 
 
“The City is aware of the claims filed by the family,” Mary Sponhaltz, Paso Robles’ deputy city clerk, wrote SFGATE on Thursday. “Our hearts go out to the family for the pain they must be enduring while they seek to [put] their lives back together and heal.  
 
“The City will navigate the legal process as we seek to understand how we might be involved with what occurred north of our jurisdiction,” she continued. “That part isn’t clear yet. However, we respect the family’s perspective and their need for closure.” 

Rita Neal, counsel for San Luis Obispo County, also responded to SFGATE’s inquiries about the lawsuit. “Although we feel sadness for the Doan family, we do not agree with the merits of the lawsuit,” Neal wrote on Wednesday. “Thus, we are actively defending the County in this matter.” 
 
Caltrans spokesperson Jim Shivers declined to comment because of the “potential for litigation.”
 
One year on, with the next chapter looking like it will be played out in court, the Doan family is still missing their five-year-old son. The Salinas River is long: It runs almost 200 miles and eventually drains into Monterey Bay. The large-scale July searches extended all the way to Monterey County, but once more concluded with no trace of Kyle.  

“Maybe he would say something like … ‘There’s nothing that you can do,’” Lindsy told CBS last January. “‘Mom, it’s OK. Everything will be OK.’”