• BODY OF MISSING ABALONE DIVER FOUND: MENDOCINO (AP) — The body of a San Francisco man who went missing while diving for abalone has been discovered.
Mendocino County Sheriff’s officials tell the Press Democrat of Santa Rosa divers sent out by the Department of Fish and Game located 44-year-old Feng Chang Wei’s body around 9 a.m. Tuesday.
Wei was with friends on Sunday when a wave pushed him into a cave near Elk Harbor off the Mendocino County coast.
His friends were apparently unable to get to him and swam out and called 911.
Rough conditions prevented rescuers from immediately getting into the cave.
Abalone are mollusks found off the California coast. They are revered by seafood lovers.
• PREGNANT WOMAN MISSING IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA: TWENTYNINE PALMS (AP) — Southern California authorities are asking for the public’s help to find a pregnant woman who mysteriously vanished on the way to Joshua Tree National Park.
The San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department says 19-year-old Erin Corwin was last seen leaving home Saturday morning. She was driving a blue, 2013 Toyota Corolla with the license plate 7CJX519. An air and ground search didn’t find her.
Sheriff’s spokeswoman Cindy Bachman tells the Riverside Press-Enterprise that “suspicious circumstances” surround the woman’s disappearance and foul play hasn’t been ruled out.
Corwin is three months’ pregnant. She and her husband, Marine Cpl. Jonathan Corwin, are from Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and live at the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center in Twentynine Palms.
• DOG ESCAPES FROM KENNEL, RUNS ACROSS LA RUNWAYS: LOS ANGELES (AP) — Officials say a dog chewed its way out of a cargo kennel at Los Angeles International Airport, ran across two runways and briefly delayed two flights before it was captured.
Airport spokeswoman Nancy Castles tells the Los Angeles Times the large brown boxer made its escape while it was being loaded on a flight to Paris.
Castles says the dog bolted across two north runways before being captured by airport personnel in a ditch near LAX’s north perimeter fence.
The incident briefly delayed an arriving flight and a departing flight.
Castles says the dog’s owner had left on a flight earlier Tuesday and was probably unaware that his pet had escaped.
• ILLEGAL FIREWORKS SEIZED IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA: SAN BERNARDINO (AP) — Authorities have seized about 10 tons of illegal fireworks coming into Southern California along Interstate 15, leading to three arrests ahead of the July 4 holiday.
The San Bernardino Sun reports the seizures occurred over two weekends at the state agricultural check border station in Yermo, just east of Barstow.
Three people were arrested and 101 citations were issued totaling more than $126,000 in fines.
Officials with the county’s fire and sheriff’s departments carried out the interdictions along with help from local agencies.
• MAN CRITICALLY INJURED IN FALL FROM LA JOLLA CLIFF: SAN DIEGO (AP) — Police say an 18-year-old man was critically injured when he fell some 75 feet down a San Diego County shoreline cliff while snapping photographs of friends.
U-T San Diego reports a friend of the victim called authorities after the accident Tuesday night.
San Diego fire-rescue spokesman Lee Swanson says rescue crews located the man at the base of a sheer cliff in an area at the tide line where there was no sand.
He was conscious but had suffered major head trauma that authorities described as life-threatening.
Swanson says the victim had stepped over a low railing on the cliff to take pictures of friends on the street side and then apparently lost his footing.
