The search resumed Monday for two young children allegedly thrown from a bridge by their father with two siblings whose bodies were found over the weekend.
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.