FRESNO, CA (KMJ) – Fresno Sheriff’s Office says their SAR Search and Rescue Team has recovered the body of a man from the San Joaquin River.
They believe he’s the missing 18-year-old hiker, Jared Gardner, who was swept away last Saturday when hiking with friends near Auberry.
Since then, Lt. Kathy Curtice says the Fresno County Sheriff’s team has been combing the area, bringing in all of their resources.
“Search dogs, we’ve been using swimmers, ground searchers – searching edges of the river, our helicopter has been searching from the sky, we’ve had airplanes, multiple drones, searching different segments of it and we have also been using boats.
A half mile from where Jared went missing a body was discovered Friday afternooon in the search area, lodged underwater.
“We located him in the water beneath a very, very large boulder field,” said Lt. Curtice.
The break came when they re-interviewed his brother from a search and rescue perspective, Lt. Curtice said they were “reassessing the water levels and the water behavior, and what the water might have been doing at the particular level that his brother was describing and it led us to focus on this area, again.”
His identity still needs to be officially confirmed by CSI technicians and the Coroner’s Office.
Click to listen to the report by KMJ’s Liz Kern:
