The body pulled from the Chena River on last Friday has been positively identified as that of 33-year-old Fairbanks resident Joshua Graham according to today's trooper dispatch.

It was at approximately 7:03 pm on May 19th, that a woman living along the Chena River heard a person calling for help in the river. When the woman looked toward the river, she saw an overturned yellow kayak in the swollen river and a man’s head bobbing nearby.

She went to get her husband and they brought back a canoe. By the time they arrived back at the river’s edge the man was no longer to be seen, all they saw was the yellow kayak floating down the river.

The woman’s husband retrieved the kayak from the river. An investigation of the kayak’s contents pointed toward the identity of Joshua Graham, a transient living in Fairbanks. A search of the river came up empty. The incident occured during breakup and the river was laden with ice chunks.

It was later that day that a Fairbanks resident reported that when he returned home from a work trip that he found that someone had broken into his home, the person had lived there for several days, and stolen several items including the yellow kayak that was subsequently retrieved from the river.

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Fairbanks Transient Breaks into Home, Steals Kayak, then Falls Victim to Chena River