Photo: Allie Hostler, Two Rivers Tribune.

The Hoopa Valley Volunteer Fire Department located a body on the Trinity River this morning, three or four miles downstream from the Tish Tang Campground where HSU foreign exchange student Jian Kang was swept into the river last week.

However, officials as yet are not verifying the identity of the body found this morning. Rod Mendes, director of the Hoopa Valley Tribe’s Office of Emergency Services, noted this morning that another young man — local resident Cody Conoboy — went missing in January and is supposed to have died in the river. The body found this morning is about to be examined by the Humboldt County Coroner’s Office, who will make a definitive identification.

Mendes told the Lost Coast Outpost that the body was located just a few hours after a newly invigorated joint effort between his office, the Humboldt State University Police and the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office set out to locate Kang. According to Mendes, Leonard Masten, the Hoopa Valley Tribe Chairman, mobilized the valley’s emergency services to help in the search. “The chairman wanted to step it up to another level,” Mendes said.

A member of the volunteer fire department, patrolling in a search boat, spotted the body on the bank of the river a quarter-mile north of the Trinity River Bridge, Mendes said. It was partially wrapped in vegetative material.

(H/t Kym Kemp, KIEM, Two Rivers Tribune).