Huntington woman found dead

Lauren Vane

A Huntington Beach woman was found dead early Sunday in a water

channel near the Haynes Power Plant in Long Beach, three days after a

plant guard saw her car plunge off an embankment and into the water

there, officials said.

Gladys Rita Ommondson, 83, was reported missing on Jan. 13 after

the body of her sister, Grace Cormier, 88, of Fountain Valley, was

discovered inside Ommondson’s 1995 black Honda Civic submerged in an

industrial water channel at the power plant.

“They probably got disoriented and, before you knew it, they drove

right off the embankment and into the channel,” said Long Beach Fire

Department spokesman Paul Rodriguez.

Though no witnesses could confirm that there were two people in

the car, information from the victims’ families indicated that

Ommondson and Cormier were together earlier in the day, police said.

Police can only speculate as to why the sisters were driving on

the plant property, Rodriguez said.

When the guard saw the car go over the embankment, he called 911

and a swift water lifeguard team responded with equipment to attempt

a dive rescue, police said. Several dive teams searched the murky

water for the car and its occupants for about an hour before finding

the car, upside down and 150 feet away from where it had gone in,

police said.

Rescuers found Cormier still inside the submerged car, police

said. After the vehicle was pulled from the water, rescuers

discovered a purse that did not belong to Cormier, leading them to

believe that there had been someone else in the car at the time of

the accident, Rodriguez said.

Divers returned to the channel, searching the half-mile long

waterway well into the night. The search -- which included a risky

probe of a narrow, underground pipe -- continued throughout Friday

using a small lifeguard boat with a sonar radar detector, police

said.

A plant supervisor walking near the channel spotted Ommondson’s

body Sunday morning at the very end of the canal, nearly 300 yards

from where the car had first gone into the water, police said. There

is no way to know if either woman tried to escape from the car or if

they were wearing seat belts, police said.