Chatsworth Victims of Boat Accident Are Recovered From Lake

The bodies of a Chatsworth woman and her 8-year-old daughter, missing since a boating collision Tuesday involving a Sherman Oaks man, were recovered Friday from Lake Havasu in Arizona.

The victims were identified as Diane Marks, 42, and Laura Bloch, 8, Mohave County Sheriff Joe Bonzelet said. Authorities had said previously that Marks’ last name was Bloch.

There was no significant trauma to either body, and both died of drowning, Mohave County Medical Examiner Henry Snell said.

Investigators from the Arizona Department of Game and Fish in Phoenix will reconstruct the accident Monday in an attempt to determine its cause, Bonzelet said.

Marks’ common-law husband and Bloch’s father, Michael Bloch, 38, remained at Havasu Regional Hospital after the removal of his spleen Thursday, hospital spokesman Dave Gabler said.

The accident occurred about 6 p.m. when a speedboat operated by John A. Brubaker, 18, hit the right side of Bloch’s 20-foot motor boat in the marina area of the lake, authorities said.

A passing boater rescued Michael Bloch, but Marks and her daughter could not be found.

Bloch’s rescuer said later that she had not seen either of the drowning victims.

“I was in the front of my boat leaning over holding him but I never saw the woman and the young girl,” the woman said.

Bonzelet said deputies will probably seek charges against Brubaker. However, before learning of the medical examiner’s findings, he said the severity of the charges sought would depend on how the victims died.

Brubaker was not hurt because Doreena Dick, 18, of Fallbrook was sitting on his lap, providing “a 110-pound seat belt” at the time of the collision, Bonzelet said.

Dick, meanwhile, was in serious condition Friday at Scripps Memorial Hospital in La Jolla where she was being treated for broken ribs, a mangled left wrist, a broken collar bone and internal injuries, hospital officials said.

Bonzelet said fatal boat accidents are common in Lake Havasu, on the Arizona-California border.

“There are people from California who come here to have a good time, and a lot of times they’re so concerned with that that they lose perspective of safety,” he said.