Two teens lost in boating disaster had survived a 2017 mass shooting

Johnny Phommathep and his two sons, Jake and Johnny Jr.

By Grace TooheyStaff Writer

Nov. 7, 2024 Updated 8:44 AM PT

Johnny Phommathep, 17, was found dead Sunday after a boating trip turned tragic in the Bay Area’s Bodega Bay. His father and brother are presumed lost at sea.
Johnny and his brother Jake had survived the Rancho Tehama mass shooting just seven years earlier. Their mother can’t fathom their misfortune: “We survived that — and for them to come to their end like this...?”

In 2017, Johnny Phommathep II and his little brother Jake were headed to their Rancho Tehama Reserve school when gunshots blasted through their mother’s car.

The boys — then 10 and 6 — and their mom, Tiffany, were struck as their neighbor went on a bloody rampage through the rural community about an hour south of Redding.

Despite several gunshot wounds, the three Phommatheps survived the mass shooting, the third in a series of unrelated acts of carnage across the U.S. They were among 14 who were hurt in Rancho Tehama. Five others died, as did the gunman.

A couple with their four boys, one a toddler held by his father, as they stand against a wall, with a bunch of balloons

But now, almost seven years to the date, Tiffany Phommathep is facing yet another life-altering tragedy — and one that appears somehow even worse than the five bullets she took trying to protect her sons during that 2017 shooting.

Johnny and Jake, now 17 and 14, along with their father — Tiffany’s husband and Johnny’s namesake — were aboard a boat that went down over the weekend in rough waters in Bodega Bay, where they had been out crabbing with three loved ones.

“It’s really hard because both my sons, Johnny Jr. and Jake, they survived the Rancho Tehama shooting,” their mother said. “We survived that and for them to come to their end like this....”

She struggled to find the words.

Of the six who went out on the boat Saturday, only the youngest, an 11-year-old relative of the Phommatheps, has been confirmed to be alive, officials said. The teenage Johnny’s body was found Sunday morning. The rest haven’t been located, nor has the boat, though debris from the vessel was found near shore Sunday.

“The odds are not likely ... but I would like to hold on to hope that maybe they reached shore somewhere,” Phommathep said.

She identified the two other adults on the boat with her husband, Johnny Phommathep, as his cousin, 45-year-old Prasong Khammoungkhoune, and his longtime friend, 42-year-old Matthew Ong. Khammoungkhoune owned the 21-foot Bayliner boat that the group often used to fish or crab.

The search for them continues, but Sonoma County sheriff’s officials said Wednesday that the effort is now considered a recovery operation to bring home the boaters’ bodies.

“Our hope is always that it’s a search to bring someone home and not a recovery, but the ocean is [in the] low 50s ... the swells are really big … and the winds have been really high,” said Deputy Rob Dillion, a spokesperson for the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office. “Unfortunately the likelihood of someone surviving that kind of inclement weather for days on end is slim.”

The deputies are also searching for one other boater, as the Phommathep boat was the first of two that capsized within 48 hours in Bodega Bay, where ocean conditions continued to become more dangerous.

One of the two men aboard the second capsized boat, which became distressed early Monday, died soon after his rescue, the Sheriff’s Office said. He has not been identified.

The 11-year-old on the boat with the Phommatheps was able to drift toward shore with the help of a life jacket and and a buoyant cooler, Phommathep said, recounting what the boy told her and officials.

“The boat started taking on water so fast they didn’t even have time to radio for emergency service,” she said. “They didn’t do anything else besides making sure everybody had a life jacket — and everybody had a life jacket.”

The boy said their group was together in the water briefly but soon became separated. He ended up reaching shore alone hours later when it was completely dark, so he waited to look for help until there was daylight, when he found a nearby highway.

Phommathep said she’s struggling to understand what might have gone wrong, noting her husband, his cousin and her sons were experienced boaters who had been out in worse conditions before. The National Weather Service, however, had issued a small-craft advisory before the group headed out early Saturday, warning that the weekend could bring dangerous conditions for small boats, according to Dial Hoang, a weather service meteorologist in the Bay Area.

“It has to be something wrong with the boat,” Phommathep said, noting that they weren’t that far from the shore.

Dillion said the exact cause hasn’t been determined, but officials believe the rough conditions were a factor. He noted that on Saturday there were 8 to 10 foot swells, with recorded winds of over 10 to 15 knots, or about 15 mph.

“That produces ocean conditions that are quite rough and difficult to navigate,” he said.

Saturday was opening day for Dungeness crab season.

The Phommathep family still lives in the Rancho Tehama Reserve area, but Johnny Phommathep and his boys often drove the almost four hours to Bodega Bay to fish or crab — and he had been looking forward to last weekend, his wife said.

They went out about 4 a.m. Saturday and typically would return in the early afternoon, Phommathep said. She started to get worried when she hadn’t heard from anyone by sunset.

Since Sunday, she’s been staying in the Bodega Bay area, holding on to some hope that her family will turn up. She said the community there has generously supported her during her stay, providing meals and hotel compensation.

“It’s hard for me to want to go because what if they find them?” she said. “I just want to be here.”

The teenage Johnny, who went by JJ, was supposed to be honored Friday at his senior night football game at Corning Union High School. Now, the school plans to honor his life, his mom said.

“He wanted to get into college, he wanted to be a pharmacist,” Phommathep said. “He was such a good kid.”

She said Jake had just started cross-country in high school. He was sweet with his three younger brothers, who are 9, 2 and 3 months old, she said. Jake would often wash the youngest brothers’ bottles, play with them and put them to sleep.

A boy with dark hair stands on a street, holding a skewer of food and a small plastic bag in his hands

“He was such a helpful kid,” she said. “He helped so much at home, so did JJ.”

Both boys looked up to their eldest brother, Tristan.

She described her husband as a loving dad who has worked for the last 14 years at AT&T. He was also an Air Force veteran who was deployed to Iraq in the early 2000s.

He tended a vegetable garden, took care of about 20 chickens and has been the family chef, she said, making amazing Vietnamese-style garlic noodles, smoked meats and deep-fried crab.

“He makes sure that his kids have everything that they needed to succeed in life,” she said. “He’s such a great cook. We’re going to miss the food that he makes.”

Friends set up a GoFundMe to support Phommathep and her four other children.

In a separate GoFundMe for his surviving wife and kids, Khammoungkhoune was described as a man who “filled his family’s life with joy, strength, and boundless love, bringing home his daily catch to share around the dinner table.”

“It brings a small comfort to know he was taken doing what he loved most, but his absence leaves a vast emptiness,” his nephews wrote.

Times staff writer Hailey Branson-Potts contributed to this report.