Dredging Fails to Uncover More Bodies in Ranch Well

Authorities on Thursday dredged a 25-foot well on a remote ranch in Boulevard in search of an unknown number of victims of a possible shootout. The body of one woman already had been recovered.

The partially clothed body of Sandra Ybarra, 34, was pulled out of the well by a crane about 5 p.m. Wednesday. Authorities said the body may have been in the well as long as a month.

The discovery was made at a ranch about 4 miles southwest of Boulevard.

Homicide investigators, drilling experts and firefighters from the community and from the California Department of Forestry descended on the ranch Monday.

Authorities said more bodies may remain in the murky water at the bottom of the well. The well appeared to have been filled in with dirt and boarded up within the past few weeks.

Sheriff’s Lt. John Tenwolde said no more bodies were found Thursday. He did not know if the search would continue today.

Sheriff’s Sgt. Manny Castillo said detectives began to examine the well after Ybarra’s mother, Beverly Devine, filed a missing person report Dec. 10. Devine said she last saw her daughter Nov. 18.

Devine told authorities that she had heard that there had been a shootout on a ranch involving a group of “bikers.” She said she was afraid her daughter may have been at the ranch at the time.

Local residents confirmed there had been a shooting and that one or more bodies had been buried in a well, Castillo said.

Dredging the well was slow work, authorities said, because large trucks used in the operation at times became stuck in mud surrounding a creek bed nearby. Most of the water was removed from the well Wednesday.

Photographers aboard a Sheriff’s Department helicopter took aerial photos, and a San Diego Police Department helicopter equipped with an infrared device designed to detect decomposing bodies in the ground hovered over the area.

A house and a trailer on the ranch were rented to tenants. The property owner, Alma Miller, does not live there, Castillo said.