Santa Clarita / Antelope Valley : Body of Serviceman Found in Aqueduct

The body of an Air Force staff sergeant who earlier this week fell into the California Aqueduct was found by a teen-ager fishing Wednesday morning.

Samuel Bible Jr., 26, was found at 8:10 a.m. in the Soledad siphon, situated off Sierra Highway south of Barrel Springs Road in Palmdale. Bible had been carried 11 miles from where he fell in the aqueduct two days earlier at Godde Hill Road in the Quartz Hill area.

Bible, an Indiana native stationed at Edwards Air Force Base where he lived with his pregnant wife and three young children, was fishing with his 5-year-old son on Labor Day when about 7 a.m. he fell into the murky water, according to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. The department’s search-and-rescue divers scoured the aqueduct for more than eight hours Monday but were unable to find the body in the channel, which is about 14 to 16 feet deep.

On Monday morning, water was flowing through the aqueduct about 6 m.p.h. where Bible fell in, said Bruce Jackson, operations superintendent with the state Department of Water Resources.

Rufus Arroyo, the 17-year-old who found Bible’s body and a regular aqueduct fisher, said he always figured that one day he would find a body in the water.

Arroyo said he was doing his usual check of the water near three “gates”--large metal doors that can be shut to restrict water flow--for such objects as errant lures and fishing poles when he saw a large dark object. Arroyo soon realized that the object was a body. He screamed to another fisherman, whose girlfriend then called the Sheriff’s Department.

“I just go in there to see what kind of junk’s in there,” Arroyo said. “It’s the first time I found a dead body.”

Bible, an avionics specialist who served in the Air Force eight years, came to Edwards AFB in June, 1992, where he worked in the 412th Logistics Test Squadron. He is the fifth person to die in the 444-mile aqueduct this year.