Creek Claims Life of Boy in Ventura County

A day after he disappeared on the way home from school for basketball practice, the body of a Moorpark sixth-grader was found washed up early Thursday on the sandy banks of a rushing drainage channel.

Officials said a motorist saw the body of Joel Burchfield, 11, on the edge of Calleguas Creek on the northern edge of Camarillo, seven miles downstream from his favorite shortcut across the Arroyo Las Posas in Moorpark.

Joel, an autopsy confirmed Thursday afternoon, had drowned.

Family friend and neighbor Ronnie Hiserman said Thursday that she usually drives Joel and her own son home from school: Joel was short, and eighth-grade bullies on the bus often picked on him.

On Wednesdays, however, Hiserman said she drives her son to catechism classes instead of coming home. On those days, she said, Joel was supposed to ride the bus home, and his father would later take him to basketball practice.

But friends said he usually ducked the bus on Wednesdays and walked home.

That was the case this Wednesday, as millions of gallons of water surged through the drainage channel. Friends said they last saw Joel trudging through the rain.

He was headed toward the place where he usually crossed the channel, at the end of Liberty Bell Road, to avoid an extra half-mile walk to safely cross the Tierra Rejada bridge.

The creek was rising about 3:30 p.m. when Joel disappeared, said county hydrologist Dolores Taylor. Between 4 and 4:30 p.m., the flow nearly doubled in volume to 560 cubic feet per second.

Friend Kyle Colon figures that Joel would never try fording the 70-foot-wide concrete arroyo, which even in dry weather is lined with slippery green algae.

“I think he’s smarter than that to just step in,” said Kyle, 13. “He probably slipped.”

Joel lived in a close-knit Ventura County neighborhood of young families and sturdy modern homes, a place where new basketball hoops hover over clean two-car garages and young children play on neatly kept lawns.

Like Joel, many of the youngsters who live there play in Little League or the Moorpark Basketball Assn.

So when word spread Wednesday that Joel had disappeared, the neighborhood and his teammates jumped into action.

Children searched backyards and parking lots. Parents walked door to door, handing out hastily printed posters bearing Joel’s picture.

By nightfall, nearly 100 volunteers had joined Joel’s father, Dan, sheriff’s deputies, Moorpark police volunteers and members of the Disaster Aid Response Team in the search.

They fanned out in teams, scouring the banks of the arroyo, nearby stores, “any place a boy might be hiding out,” said Sgt. Rodney Mendoza.

At about 2 a.m., searchers found Joel’s empty backpack a mile downstream from the crossing, near Hitch Boulevard, Mendoza said. Floodwaters had sucked out his books and homework papers, leaving only a set of house keys in a zippered side pocket.

“It’s so easy to underestimate the rivers,” said Senior Deputy Mike Christensen. “Even adults [who fall in] have a hard time fighting the current.”

After finding the backpack, the civilians quit for the night; but sheriff’s search-and-rescue workers continued floating downstream in a raft until 5 a.m. looking for signs of Joel.

The full search resumed Thursday morning after first light, with two sheriff’s helicopters clattering overhead.

At about 7:30 a.m., a motorist driving down Upland Road spotted something on the sandy bed of the Calleguas Creek near St. John’s Seminary--a small body partially covered with sand and brush. His father rushed to the scene and confirmed: It was Joel.

Friends and neighbors huddled in grief Thursday morning along sidewalks in front of Kyle’s house.

A school district psychiatrist herded some into a neighbor’s home for grief counseling.

Then, she sent Joel’s friends and basketball teammates out to shoot some hoops, hoping they might vent some of their emotions as they tried to deal with losing a close friend.

Friends remembered Joel as a boy with a good sense of humor and a strong interest in sports.

He was athletic, they said, “an awesome baseball player” with the Reds, his Little League Team. He played basketball in the off-season on a team coached by his dad. He was a good skater and dreamed of being a professional in-line skater when he grew up.

“He was really funny,” said Little League teammate Robbie Jacalone, 11, clustered with friends by the basketball court.

“It’s sad,” said schoolmate Brad Olszowy, 11. “But it doesn’t really seem like he’s gone.”

Reed is a Times staff writer and Green is a correspondent.