BAYOU LA BATRE, Ala., Jan. 14, 2008
Grim Hunt For Bodies In Ala. Bayou
Search Continues For Children Allegedly Thrown From Bridge By Father
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A search team explores the waters near the Dauphin Island Bridge in Mobile, Ala. Police say currents carried two of the bodies of children thrown from the bridge westward. (WKRG)
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Lam Luong, who police say threw his four children off a Mobile, Ala., bridge, has been charged with capital murder. A second child's body has been recovered from the water nearby. (WKRG)
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Interactive Children In Danger Warning signs, state-by-state child services information and a history of child welfare reforms.
The bodies of 3-year-old Ryan Phan and 4-month-old Danny Luong were discovered a few miles west of the 80-foot-tall coastal bridge, where authorities said the father tossed all four children Jan. 7 after a fight with his wife.
Rescuers Monday searched the waters for 2-year-old Hannah Luong and Lindsey Luong, 1, not far from Bayou La Batre, where the family lived.
The search zone was extended to waters off the shore of Pascagoula, Miss., after Ryan's body was spotted Sunday near shore in Bayou La Fourche Bay, about three miles west of where the 4-month-old was found by a duck hunter Saturday, Mobile County Sheriff Sam Cochran said.
Searchers used helicopters and airplanes as well as airboats along the shallow, marshy shoreline over the weekend. Some volunteers walked hand-in-hand in a slow stroll, overturning logs and debris.
Cochran said the last two bodies could be in nearby marshes or taken by the current closer to the Alabama-Mississippi line.
The search began Jan. 8 after prosecutors said the father, Lam Luong, broke down and confessed to driving the children to the two-lane bridge and throwing them into the waters below after a fight with his wife, 23-year-old Kieu Phan. Authorities said the children were apparently dropped from the highest point of the 3-mile-long span, about 80 feet above the main channel of the Intracoastal Waterway.
Luong, 37, a shrimp boat worker who had moved the family back to the bayou area after living about two years in Hinesville, Ga., remained jailed in Mobile without bond on four capital murder charges.
He first claimed that two Asian women took the children Jan. 7 and failed to return them as promised. But authorities said the story failed to hold up and he confessed. He later recanted the confession in his first meeting with an appointed defense attorney, Joe Kulakowski.
Kulakowski planned to seek court appointment of a Vietnamese interpreter Monday to help him overcome language barriers in speaking with his client. Luong came to the U.S. from Vietnam in 1984.
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- it is a shame to hear of something like this children do not ask to be brought into this world. it is a gift that god can give. i hope that the father gets the death penilties. it would serve him right or make him go and help find the childern for what he has done.
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- Imagine that....been here 25 yrs, and STILL cant speak english, so now we not only have to pay for his free atty, but a translater as well. What a county huh?
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- So, this is like the 2nd week in a row we have a story about someone getting in a fight with their wife and throwing the kids off a bridge... Why don''t they do us all a favor and throw themselves off the bridge?
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- Have to respect the men that look for bodies...Thanks...THE PUBLIC
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- *** civil war if not for that this would have been taken care of by now,
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