A 5-year-old boy was swept away in a San Luis Obispo County creek and a driver drowned on a beach road during a day of flooding on California’s Central Coast.

The woman who drowned had driven onto Avila Beach Drive despite signs saying a mile-long section was closed because of flooding Monday morning, the California Highway Patrol said.

Her vehicle was inundated by floodwaters near Sycamore Mineral Springs. No information about her identity has been released.

Around the same time, about 8 a.m. Monday, an emergency call reported a pickup truck stranded in floodwaters near Paso Robles with a mother and her son inside.

Bystanders were able to pull the mother out of the truck, but the boy was swept downstream, toward the Salinas River, said Tom Swanson, assistant chief of the Cal Fire/San Luis Obispo County Fire Department.

The mother had been trying to drive on a roadway flooded by the San Marcos Creek, near San Marcos and Wellsona roads.

The search for the missing boy continued for more than seven hours until it was called off when water levels became too dangerous for divers, officials said. Only the boy’s shoe was found.

The schools superintendent in San Miguel told the Tribune that the boy is a kindergartner at Lillian Larsen Elementary School and that his mother is a teacher in the district. “Our staff is heartbroken over this tragedy,” Karen Grandoli wrote in an email to the news organization. “I guess we’re still hoping for a miracle but it doesn’t look good.”

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