Authorities have ended a monthslong search effort for the body of an 11-year-old Bakersfield girl who was swept away by the Kern River earlier this summer, the Kern County Sheriff’s Office announced Tuesday.
A final search involving 60 volunteers from various Search and Rescue teams took place Saturday, according to Bakersfield television station KGET.
Despite exhaustive efforts, crews were unable to locate the girl’s body, the Sheriff’s Office said in a Facebook post.
Volunteers spent more than 3,000 hours combing various parts of river between June 22 — when the 11-year-old was reported missing — and Nov. 1.
Most the efforts were concentrated on the first 6 miles downstream from where the juvenile went missing, which was the Keysville area.
However, the searches yielded no results due to extremely high river flows.
Search and rescue teams decided to go out once more river flow levels dropped to 350 cubic feet per second, the department said.
“Unfortunately, despite this large-scale search, we were unable to locate the body,” the department said in the post. “These searches and the many others like them would not be possible without the efforts of our amazing (Search and Rescue) volunteers.”
From June through mid-August, crews recovered six bodies from the Kern River.
The victims included a two men from Los Angeles, two teenage cousins from San Bernardino, a 22-year-old man from Placentia and a 20-year-old man from Sylmar, according to the Sheriff’s Office.
