Services are scheduled for a former Perris High School competitive swimmer who died while surfing in Central California. This week's tributes include a "paddle-out" in Oceanside.
Mourners plan to take their surfboards out into the waves on Thursday afternoon. They’ll spread flowers on the water in memory of 19-year-old Lucas Ransom.
He died in a shark attack last week off the coast near Vandenberg Air Force Base. Other memorials include a Catholic funeral mass in Perris and a memorial service at a local mortuary.
The assistant principal at Perris High remembers Ransom as a model student who’d graduated in the top 5 percent of his class. He was majoring in chemical engineering at UC Santa Barbara when he died.
The Santa Barbara County coroner's office has concluded that the young man bled to death after a great white shark attacked him. Authorities consulted a shark expert, who measured the distance between teeth marks on Ransom's surfboard and evaluated witness accounts to estimate that the shark was 17 to 18 feet long and weighed about 4,000 pounds.
Officials have reopened Surf Beach, where the attack occurred.
