A spokesman for the Coast Guard did not directly connect the rescue operation to Thursday’s boat strike in the eastern Pacific Ocean. The vessel sent the man to Costa Rica, and recovered two dead bodies.
The U.S. military struck a boat in the eastern Pacific Ocean on Thursday, sinking the vessel and leaving three men adrift at sea, the Defense Department said on Friday.
Hours later, the U.S. Coast Guard said it recovered two dead bodies and one survivor from the same area and turned them over to Costa Rica’s Coast Guard. A Coast Guard spokesman did not directly connect the rescue operation to the boat strike, instead saying that U.S. Southern Command notified them of “three individuals in distress,” a phrase usually used in a peacetime and civilian context.
In its own statement, Costa Rica’s Coast Guard said that a shipwreck occurred 126 nautical miles off Costa Rica’s most southern port town, Golfito. The statement said that the survivor, who was seriously injured, was taken to Golfito for medical treatment. It added that the bodies of the two dead men, who have not been identified, were turned over to Costa Rican law enforcement for investigation.
The Trump administration has previously sent survivors of boat strikes out of U.S. jurisdiction as part of an effort to avoid legal scrutiny of President Trump’s campaign to kill people his administration accuses, without providing evidence, of smuggling drugs at sea.
The U.S. Southern Command announced the strike on social media with a 16-second video clip that showed a small boat moving in the water suddenly exploding. The end of the video shows the vessel burning. U.S. and Costa Rican authorities did not provide details about the survivor, whose nationality is unknown.
U.S. Southern Command had said in its own statement that it had “notified U.S. Coast Guard to activate the Search and Rescue system for the survivors.”