ANAHEIM : Body of Man Swept Away in River Found

The body of an 18-year-old Stanton man who was swept away in the Santa Ana River on Sunday morning was discovered by a bicycle rider early Thursday, police said.

Doan Huu Tran, a senior at Rancho Alamitos High School, was spotted by the bicyclist floating in the river near Yorba Park in Anaheim, about two miles south of where the incident happened, said Brea police Lt. Ed McDonald.

Brea police, who had been investigating the case since Sunday, sent a search and rescue team from the Orange County Sheriff’s Department to the scene and they recovered the body.

McDonald said Tran was on a scavenger hunt in a remote section of Featherly Regional Park with other members of a Buddhist scout group when he tried to cross a seemingly shallow section of the river, which flows below Prado Dam.

“One of the guys he was paired up with on the scavenger hunt said they crossed one fork of the river which wasn’t very deep but when they reached a second fork of the water, it was running very fast,” McDonald said. “He tried to cross it and was swept away.”

Tran’s house in the 7000 block of Davmor Avenue was overflowing with his high school friends and relatives Thursday afternoon. His father, Lau Van Tran, 46, walked back and forth inside crying for his son, who had been the third of his five children.

Lau Van Tran later said his family had come from Vietnam in 1991 and Doan Huu Tran was a good student and a helpful son.

“I thought I had suffered terribly in re-education camps but now I truly can not forget this sorrow,” said Tran, who was in Communist prisons for six years after South Vietnam fell in 1975.

Funeral services for Doan Tran are expected to be Wednesday, his father said.

The original five-mile search for Tran, which involved 27 firefighters, a special “swift water rescue team” from the Orange County Fire Department, and police helicopters, was abandoned after 4 1/2 hours Sunday.

The search for Tran, who reportedly did not know how to swim, was hampered by deep, swift-moving water and rugged terrain.

McDonald said his body was probably trapped in heavy debris, which he said could explain why his body didn’t surface for several days.

An autopsy was scheduled for today to determine the cause of death.