Sister’s Body Found in Water

Firefighters on Sunday recovered the body of an 83-year-old Huntington Beach woman who apparently drowned with her sister last week when their car went into an industrial channel near the flood-swollen San Gabriel River in Long Beach.

The body of Gladys Ommondson was spotted about 8:30 a.m. by a supervisor at the Haynes Power Plant near 2nd Street and Studebaker Road on the west side of the river, according to Paul Rodriguez, a spokesman for the Long Beach Fire Department.

He said the partially submerged body was found about 300 yards from where the accident occurred Thursday after she and her sister -- Grace Cormier, 88 -- drove onto the power plant premises and then over an embankment and into the channel.

Cormier’s body was recovered almost immediately, Rodriguez said, but an intensive 20-hour search had failed to turn up Ommondson’s before being called off late Friday.

“Obviously, we’re never going to know” exactly what happened, he said Sunday. “We think it’s possible that they got disoriented and took a wrong turn.”