Family of four – including two young children – were declared dead a month after their boat capsized off Alaska

A family of four who disappeared after their boat capsized off the coast of Alaska has been officially declared dead nearly two months after the tragic accident.

David Maynard, 42, his wife Mary, 37, and their two children, 11-year-old Colton and 7-year-old Brantley, went missing on August 3 when a 28-foot boat they were in crashed 16 miles capsized off the coast of Homer Spit, KCEN-TV News reported.

Four other people who were on the aluminum vessel were rescued by the U.S. Coast Guard – but the Maynard family was never found despite a 30-hour search of the area, the outlet said.

“They were just gone,” one of the survivors told the station. “It must have taken, I mean, 10 minutes, maybe 10 minutes of us having fun, getting to the boat. The boat rolled so that it tipped over on its side and then the engines stopped and only the nose rose.”

On Sept. 19, a six-member jury declared the Maynards officially dead during a presumptive homicide hearing, a process used to determine the fate of missing people believed to have died, according to newly obtained KCEN records.

At the hearing, the captain of the doomed boat testified that the boat’s engine had failed, so he anchored the boat – when David Maynard noticed something was wrong.

“Sometime. “David asked me, getting my attention and pointing to the back corner of the deck where there was a drainage hole for water that would come onto the deck,” said the captain, who was not named.

“He pointed at it and said: Is this normal? I said no,” he said. “At this point I went into the cabin and was about to start the engine to pull the anchor, but the engines wouldn’t start and I kept trying.”

As the boat sank, the captain said he went after his own family to rescue them and lost sight of the Maynards, who disappeared into the frigid waters, the outlet reported.