Coast Guard Officials Call Off Search for Body

Coast Guard officials late Monday called off a search for an apparent headless and armless body seen floating earlier in the day about 12 miles off the coast of Oxnard in the Santa Barbara Channel.

Ventura County coroner’s officials assisted in the search but said they had no clues to an identity. Nor did authorities know of any connection to the set of human arms that washed up on Los Angeles-area beaches earlier this month.

“Until we have a body, we couldn’t look into it,” Deputy Coroner Jim Wingate said. “For all we know, it could have been the body of a seal.”

A patrol boat from the Coast Guard office in the Channel Islands Harbor ended its search at 4:49 p.m. because of darkness, said Petty Officer George Wills.

Wingate said coroner’s officials have not decided whether they will resume the search today, when stormy weather and choppy seas are predicted.

Searchers began combing the area two hours earlier after a helicopter pilot notified authorities that he spotted a bloated body floating about three miles southwest of the Chevron oil company’s Platform Gail.

Jim McCrory said he was on his way back from dropping off Navy personnel at a radar station on Santa Cruz Island when he saw something odd in the water. He circled back and lowered the craft to about 20 feet above the shape to get a better look, he said.

The body appeared to have been decapitated at shoulder level and was also armless, he said. It appeared to be a male, he said, and was wearing only a pair of pants pulled loose around the legs and athletic shoes attached with Velcro straps.

McCrory said there is no question in his mind that it was a human body.

“I’ve seen dead seals out there before and they end up with the same bloated look,” said McCrory, who flew three years for the Coast Guard before taking a job as a commercial pilot. “But the pants and the shoes are what cinched it. I thought, ‘Oh dear, I better report this.’ ”

Los Angeles officials have identified the two arms that washed up on the beach Dec. 7, one on the sand in Venice and the other near a boat slip in Marina del Rey. They belonged to Cheryle Gossett, 48, of southwest Los Angeles, who was identified through fingerprints.

But investigators have been stymied by a lack of evidence in the case and had been hoping for a break.

Mike Marcy, a spokesman for Chevron USA, which owns Platform Gail, said all workers at the offshore rig have been accounted for. After hearing about the body sighting, employees scanned the seas surrounding the platform but were unable to spot anything, he said.