The mother of a missing 5-year-old is speaking out as the search for her little boy enters its fifth day. According to Lyndsy Doan, whose son Kyle was tragically swept away by floodwaters on Monday morning in Northern California, says his final words to her were both prophetic and heartbreaking. Sadly, she keeps replaying them in her mind as the days drag on, and her hope of finding him alive begins to wane.
Kyle was on his way to school January 10 when tragedy struck
Lyndsy Doan was driving her little boy to Lilian Larsen Elementary School in San Miguel, California, when heavy rain began to cause intense flooding.
"I realized I was drifting, and his last words to me were, 'Mom, it's OK. Just be calm,'" Doan recalled.
But in a matter of seconds, it was clear that things were not OK.
According to Doan, she lost control of the car before it struck two trees
"I tried to get the windows down," she said of the moment she realized they were trapped. "I couldn't."
What happened next still haunts her.
Search resumes for boy missing in deadly California floods https://t.co/eyczdhGiTD
— WZMQ 19 News (@wzmq19) January 12, 2023
"I thought the best action would be to leave the car so I opened my door," the mother told KSBY. "Kyle was then strapped to his seatbelt on his booster. I told him to climb over to the door that was open to my door, so he unstrapped his seatbelt. He had his backpack with him. I told him, 'Leave your backpack there.'"
Outside the car, both mother and son fought hard against the current
"I was able to grab onto him, but the current pushed Kyle out and our hands slipped," Doan said.
In the blink of an eye, she and Kyle were separated as he drifted away in the floodwater.
"I saw his head kind of floating, and he was looking at me ’cause he was going backward for a little bit of time," the mother recalled.
Luckily, bystanders came to the rescue
But by then, they were only able to reach Doan. KSBY reports that the strangers threw a rope around the mother and pulled her from the muddy waters to safety.
"When I had asked them what about Kyle, they said they had seen Kyle, but he was floating on his back," Doan recalled. "There was no way they could throw a rope to him because of where he was."
A 5-year-old boy is missing after he was swept out of his mother’s arms by powerful floodwaters coming from a storm that has turned streets into rivers in California. His father recounts the last moment the kindergartener was seen.
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— CNN (@CNN) January 12, 2023
As of Friday morning, Kyle had still not been found
In addition to countless friends and family members who've been looking for him, the San Luis Obispo County Sheriff's Office has launched a widescale search for the boy. The search crew consists of dive team members, multiple search and rescue teams, K9 units from nearby counties, and more than 100 national guard members who've reportedly come in to assist both local and state agencies.
California has been experiencing extreme weather conditions for weeks now
According to the National Weather Service, a “seemingly never-ending parade” of strong storm systems have dropped massive amounts of rain and snow across multiple counties, leading to large-scale flooding, mudslides, and powerful winds. It appears to be caused by something called "atmospheric rivers," which Scientific American defines as "long, narrow currents of exceptionally wet air that shoot across the ocean, capable of dumping massive volumes of rain or snow on landfall."
As a result, millions of residents have had to either shelter in place or evacuate their homes in order to seek safety.
So far, the flooding has been tied to 17 deaths throughout the state, though many Californians including Kyle remain unaccounted for.
In the meantime, millions of homes, cars, and businesses remain underwater, as the state faces an estimated $1 billion in damage.
Kyle’s father has also spoken out about his disappearance
"My wife … it’s hard, because she survived the event and he’s not here," Brian Doan told CNN earlier this week. "And she feels really guilty that she wasn’t the one to go down, and not him."
In fact, Brian said that his wife is so distraught, she's been refusing to eat.
"If my son’s out there, I don’t want to eat either," she reportedly told her husband.
“He was a good kid, he had lots of friends… he liked to help the teacher," Brian said of his son. "He’s probably like a lot of kids you know in your neighborhood."
For now, the family is doing what they can to get through each day while waiting for answers.
“I just want him back,” Brian told CNN.
"I'd do anything to just have him go, 'Mommy, mommy, mommy, mommy' to me for hours a day," Lyndsy said, according to KSBY.
