Questions remain surrounding the death of a West Vancouver girl and the disappearance of her father after an incident on the water off Gambier Island last weekend.
The victims have been identified as 60-year-old William Liebenberg, a popular North Vancouver dentist, and his six-year-old daughter Maddie.
The two left from Lions Bay Marina earlier during the day on Saturday, July 25. A boater spotted their 20-foot aluminum hard-top boat adrift around 9:30 p.m. and called for help.
The keys were in the ignition and their belongings were still on board.
The Joint Rescue Coor-dination Centre called in two Coast Guard hovercraft, a rescue boat as well as a Cormorant helicopter and three Royal Canadian Marine Search and Rescue units.
Searchers in the helicopter spotted Maddie in the water a few hours into the search but there was no sign of Liebenberg. The water in Howe Sound that night was 19C.
“In waters that temperature, a healthy person has a good chance of retaining the ability to self-rescue for a longer period of time, maybe making it to shore or clinging to something that was floating in the area,” said Maj. Justin Olsen, with the rescue centre.
Authorities called off the search late on Sunday. RCMP have taken over the investigation.
“[The Coast Guard] said the average person in those waters would be able to survive for 11 hours,” said Sunshine Cost RCMP Staff Sgt. Vishal Mathura. “They conducted their search for over 20 hours, just going up and down the coast trying to find him. Unfortunately, given the tides and everything, if the person were unconscious, they would have moved out of that search area and probably would not have survived.”
Maddie’s body has been turned over to the B.C. Coroners Service and Sunshine Coast RCMP are now treating Liebenberg as a missing person.
“We are still investigating the events that led to them departing in the boat and also what transpired on the boat,” Mathura said on Monday. Anyone who saw them that day is asked to contact Sunshine Coast RCMP.
As of Tuesday, the B.C. Coroners Service had not yet established a cause of death for Maddie.
