Search for Missing Kayaker, Apparent Shark Victim, Ends

The Coast Guard called off an air and sea search Wednesday for a graduate student whose girlfriend apparently was killed by a shark while the two were kayaking last week.

The search was halted because the chances of “locating a survivor” were slim after a week of searching, Petty Officer Robert Beals said.

A helicopter and 41-foot patrol boat were called in at 4:30 p.m. after seven hours of combing miles of ocean for Roy Jeffrey Stoddard, 24, who has been missing since he and Tamara McAllister, also 24, left on a kayaking excursion off Malibu last Thursday.

Stoddard’s family had hired a private airplane and joined the search, but it was not known whether the family would continue looking. The search concentrated on the shore between Ventura and Santa Barbara, after earlier forays south of Ventura.

McAllister, a graduate student of public health at UCLA who lived in Mar Vista, was found dead Saturday about five miles off Channel Island Harbor in Oxnard by a sailboat crew.

Ventura County Coroner F. Warren Lovell said McAllister, of Portland, Ore., was killed by a shark, probably a great white.

Officials believe Stoddard, a graduate student in epidemiology at UCLA who lived in Malibu, also may have been attacked by a shark.