The Tulare County Sheriff's Office has been looking for 30-year-old Timothy Shields since Saturday night.
On Monday afternoon, two women found his body in the canal near Farmersville. One of them was his sister.
"I looked on this side of the ditch, I didn't see anything. So I went on the other side and just peeked around and there's his orange shirt. There's no way they had divers in there looking for him, it took me five minutes to find my baby brother," said Taryn Murrieta, the sister.
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Shields' girlfriend had told authorities she and he were walking along Avenue 288 between Visalia and Farmersville on Saturday.
When they crossed over a canal bridge, she says a car hit her boyfriend, the force possibly sending him into the canal.
Tulare County Fire, the California Highway Patrol, and the Tulare County Sheriff's Office started searching for him that night, on the ground, in the water, and by air.
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The work continued on Sunday, but searchers couldn't find Shields.
Earlier on Monday, the sheriff's office said they didn't have the evidence to back up his girlfriend's story, so they called it a suspicious missing persons case.