5-year-old boy swept away in California floodwaters

PASO ROBLES, Calif. - As another powerful storm walloped California, a 5-year-old boy was swept away by floodwaters Monday on the state’s central coast. 

A roughly seven-hour search for the missing boy turned up only his shoe before officials called it off as water levels were too dangerous for divers, officials said. 

The boy has not been declared dead, said spokesperson Tony Cipolla of the San Luis Obispo County Sheriff’s Office.

The boy’s mother was driving a truck when it became stranded in floodwaters just before 8 a.m. near Paso Robles, a small city inland from California’s central coast, according to Tom Swanson, assistant chief of the Cal Fire/San Luis Obispo County Fire Department.

Bystanders were able to pull the mother out of the truck, but the boy was swept out of the vehicle and downstream, likely into a river, Swanson said. There was no evacuation order in the area at the time.

The death toll from the relentless string of storms climbed from 12 to 14 on Monday, after two people were killed by falling trees, state officials said.

Some of those deaths include 2-year-old Aeon Tocchini, who was killed when a redwood tree fell on his Sonoma County home and a 19-year-old driver in Fairfield, who hydroplaned on a patch of standing water, lost control of her car and slammed into a light pole. 

KTVU's Lisa Fernandez contributed to this report.