5-year-old SLO County boy disappeared in a flood 4 months ago. His family wants answers

It’s been four months since 5-year-old Kyle Doan was swept away by floodwaters in San Miguel during the Jan. 9 atmospheric river storm.

He still hasn’t been found.

With each passing day, Kyle’s parents Brian and Lindsy Doan, grow more frustrated. They feel like the San Luis Obispo County Sheriff’s Office has given them an empty promise of finding their son.

“With the sheriff and all these agencies,” Brian Doan told The Tribune, “we get a lot of press statements that are basically word salad to cover their butt.”

Kyle’s parents feel like the Sheriff’s Office, the California Office of Emergency Services and Gov. Gavin Newsom are not doing everything they can to find their son, and they believe the agencies have missed opportunities when weather conditions were optimal to search.

“It’s kind of like death by a thousand cuts,” Doan said at a Tuesday press conference in San Miguel. “You get in this pattern of waiting for news and you’re trying to be patient.”

But patience is hard when your kindergartner was ripped away in such a traumatic way, Doan told The Tribune, especially when it feels like agencies who are supposed to help are working against you.

The Sheriff’s Office did not respond to specific detailed questions from The Tribune but said in an emailed statement that the agency has conducted multiple searches since Kyle disappeared and will continue to do so until all reasonable efforts are exhausted.

“We understand the family is frustrated,” spokesperson Tony Cipolla wrote in the email. “We, too, are disappointed we haven’t been able to locate him. We want to find Kyle and bring him home.”

Sheriff search efforts for Kyle Doan are ‘insufficient,’ father says

The sheriff called off active searches for Kyle on Jan. 25 — about two weeks after the boy was swept away — and said it would continue efforts on a “limited, ongoing basis.”

Since then, the family has conducted its own searches by organizing search parties and having K9 teams from out of state come to the area.

According to Doan, the Sheriff’s Office hasn’t done an extensive search for their son since early February.

Doan told The Tribune that the K9 teams alerted in the area of San Marcos Creek near where his wife was pulled out of the water and his son disappeared, and said that the sheriff told him the agency also got K9 alerts in that area.

Doan said he was also made aware of a previous partial alert in that area by a California Office of Emergency Services K9 team in the early days of the search.

“What are you gonna do about it?” Doan asked during a mid-March meeting with Sheriff Ian Parkinson and other agency heads, he said.

“And they just said, ‘Well, we’re formulating a plan and we’re waiting for conditions to improve.’ And that’s been their standard line for weeks on an end,” he said.

The Doans were able to have volunteers excavate in mid-April, and they have marked where their K9s alerted. They want to bring dogs in again to confirm findings so they can clear that search area, but they are hitting a wall.

The K9 agency they are working with has a policy where it will only search if given some sort of approval from the lead agency operating the search, in this case the San Luis Obispo County Sheriff’s Office. The office gave the agency approval the first time they searched but haven’t approved their follow-up.

So the search is at a stalemate.

The Doan family is optimistic that Kyle is in the area where the K9s alerted, but they haven’t been able to thoroughly excavate it.

“We need the sheriff’s department to give us what they said they would, which is offering support for our efforts,” Doan said. “They are not out here with boots on the ground and doing searches.”

According to a letter Kyle’s parents sent the Sheriff’s Office Monday evening, Parkinson told Brian and Lindsy, “like Kristin Smart’s case, the Sheriff’s Office is committed to supporting us with finding Kyle.”

But that statement didn’t give the Doan family any comfort.

While Smart’s killer was convicted and sentenced to life in prison, her body still hasn’t been found.

“You’ve made promises to Kristin Smart’s family that were never fulfilled,” the letter said. “This in itself does not provide us any hope that your promise will be fulfilled.”

Brian Doan said there were two weeks of optimal weather conditions in February where the creek was dry.

But the Sheriff’s Office didn’t conduct any searches — something he said was a missed opportunity.

Doan said when he asked Parkinson during the mid-March meeting why there weren’t any searches during that time, Parkinson replied, “Well, we can’t provide searches 24/7.”

“They claim that they never stopped searching,” Doan said. “They have not really gone out and searched except for the occasional cosmetic flier with helicopters back in March, February, maybe an ATV drive-through, which is rather insufficient.”

Cipolla did not say how many times the office has looked for Kyle since Jan. 25. He did not respond to specific questions about the K9 alerts, February weather conditions and statements made during the mid-March meeting, but said their last search was two weeks ago.

There is a large search planned with outside agencies through the state Office of Emergency Services that will involve search-and-rescue teams, drones and K9s, Cipolla said, but a date has not been scheduled.

“The river conditions are still an issue,” Cipolla said. “The ground in that area is still so saturated we can’t get crews in to search, let alone heavy machinery to dig.”

This explanation doesn’t add up, Brian Doan said, because volunteers were able to operate heavy machinery on April 11 when they excavated the area where K9s alerted.

Brian Doan said he believes the creek is now low enough to search, but feels the Sheriff’s Office has kept his family at “arms-length” and out of the loop when it comes to progress on finding their son.

He said his family is only informed of actions by the agency after they happen, and the details that are shared are sparse.

“We have been in close contact with the family and will continue to be available to them,” Cipolla said in the statement. “All meetings with the family have been held with the goal of sharing information and listening to their concerns and ideas.”

Local agencies asked state to stop assisting with search, governor says

The family also wants more help from the state.

During a tour of storm damage near Santa Cruz on Jan. 19, President Joe Biden and Gov. Gavin Newsom both mentioned Kyle.

Biden said Kyle and the Doan family were in his and Jill Biden’s prayers, but Brian Doan noted that the president did not say his son’s name.

Newsom did mention Kyle by name during the January press conference.

“We won’t give up until we find Kyle,” he said at the time.

But Brian Doan told The Tribune he feels the governor has not lived up to his promise, calling Newsom’s statement more “word salad.”

At a May 2 press conference in Los Angeles, Newsom was asked whether his office was doing anything to support search efforts for Kyle, and the governor said he was proud of the “remarkable, large scale effort” by local and state agencies to find him in the days after he vanished.

“It’s devastating and breaks your heart,” Newsom told the reporter.

He added that local agencies requested the state no longer participate in search efforts, and the state followed that guidance.

In a joint letter to the governor in response to the press conference, Kyle’s parents told Newsom he gave a “false impression that you somehow cared enough about our son and tragedy.”

The parents allege Newsom lied when he said he gave the impression that he had visited the search area when he had not actually done so.

“While you may personally care and state that Kyle is a ‘number one priority,’ you have demonstrated that you are vain,” the letter said. “Such a lie is beyond hurtful and disrespectful to Kyle and our family.”

Brian Ferguson, spokesperson for the governor, told The Tribune in an emailed statement that the “full weight of the state” is behind local officials leading the search for Kyle and is ready to support efforts on the ground to facilitate the response and provide access to state resources.

He noted the resources the state provided in the beginning of the search, including deploying 100 personnel form the National Guard, providing state-trained search-and-rescue crews and eliminating barriers to search on state lands and other sensitive areas.

He said the state has let the SLO County Sheriff’s Office know it is ready to provide “any and all available resources to continue a robust search,” and that all costs associated with the search are fully reimbursable under President Biden’s major disaster declaration for the county.

Local agencies told the state they are waiting for water levels to recede before resuming search efforts and accessing areas that currently cannot be reached, Ferguson said.

“The state stands ready to be a critical part of that effort at the request of the San Luis Obispo Sheriff’s Office,” he said.

Cipolla told The Tribune in an email that the Sheriff’s Office continues to be in contact and is working closely with the Governor’s Office and other allied state agencies.

But, he said, “We did not ask the state to step aside in the search for Kyle.”

Family petitions for more action to find their son

In the meantime, the family struggles with the daily void while taking whatever steps they can to keep the search alive.

Last week, Kyle’s mother Lindsy Doan created a petition to push the Sheriff’s Office and state entities to resume looking for her son. It’s up to more than 2,500 signatures as of Tuesday morning.

Her goal is to reach 10,000 signatures. The petition is available at change.org/p/get-san-luis-obispo-sheriffs-and-state-entities-to-resume-searches-for-kyle-doan.

Brian Doan said his wife launched the petition to make the public aware of the frustrations they’ve experienced.

On Tuesday, Doan reflected on how the loss has affected the family, saying there was never a dull moment with their son. Kyle loved music and wasn’t afraid break into a dance when he would pass by music playing in a restaurant.

Just before the Jan. 9 flood, the family visited Brian Doan’s mother in Sacramento. She hadn’t seen the family in a while because of the COVID-19 pandemic, and she was afraid Kyle wouldn’t remember who she was.

“It had been so long since she saw him last, but he was so accepting of her. I didn’t take pictures because we figured we’ll be back in the spring,” Brian Doan said. “We didn’t get to do that.”

His family hasn’t been the same since Kyle disappeared.

Kyle was the youngest sibling, with a 17-year-old sister and 18-year-old brother. The family is still processing the loss.

Brian Doan said the first month was the “darkest month” he’s ever faced, and it feels impossible to adjust to living life without his son.

The house is quieter at night without a 5-year-old “disturbing the peace,” Brian Doan said. Kyle had just gotten a rod removed from his leg from a broken femur and was ready to play soccer and play with friends.

Kyle’s food is still in their freezer, remaining untouched. The family doesn’t know what to do with it.

His sixth birthday is in two months — July 17 — which is expected to be an unimaginably hard day.

“It’s the worst thing in the world to not know where your son is” Brian Doan said at the press conference. “Every time you wake up, you realize he’s not there.”