Body of missing boater in Fort Pierce identified

FORT PIERCE, Fla. - The family of a Fort Pierce boater says it has been told that the Coast Guard has recovered the body of their loved one.

44-year-old Cornelius McPhall had been missing following an afternoon of boating with his ex-girlfriend and another person.

Family members say Cornelius had more than twenty years of boating experience.

He was in the process of dropping anchor in the Fort Pierce Inlet when he apparently fell overboard. The motor on his boat had stopped working. U.S. Coast Guard Petty Officer Nick Hatz told TCPalm.com that McPhall wasn't wearing a life jacket. when the outgoing tide swept him out to the ocean.

Search crews from the Fort Pierce Police Department, FWC, the St. Lucie County Sheriff's office and Coast Guard had been searching the inlet, and nearby waters, since about midnight.

By 5:00 a.m. McPhall's body was recovered about 1 1/2 miles from where he fell overboard from a 17-foot Cobia, near Shark’s Island by the Smithsonian Marine Station.

The boating fatality is the second in four days in St. Lucie County. Commercial fisherman Cory R. Brangan, 26, of Fort Pierce, died Saturday morning after an apparent boating accident in the Indian River Lagoon, said Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission spokeswoman Gabriella Ferraro.

Brangan was found alone in a 20-foot-long fishing boat that had run aground on a spoil island north of the North Bridge in Fort Pierce and east of the Intracoastal Waterway, she said. The boat was damaged, but the cause is unknown, she said.

“That is under investigation,” she said Tuesday.

Autopsy results are pending. The search began 8:30 a.m. Saturday when Brangan’s family contacted authorities because he didn’t return to Inlet Fisheries Inc.

Elliott Jones of Scripps Treasure Coast Newspapers contributed to this report.