The body of a 24-year-old woman who called her mother late Thursday to say her car plunged into the California Aqueduct while she was still inside was found, according to authorities.
The woman, Xanthel Linares, called her mother just before midnight to alert her of the crash, but the phone call was cut off. They said her last words were, "I love you."
"She was screaming desperately," the victim's mother Patricia Linares said.
Linares was a cancer survivor whose ambition was to help others. Family members of the victim said she aspired to be a social worker.
"My sister - she was a good girl," Cosette Linares, the victim's sister, said. "This didn't deserve to happen to her."
Authorities responded to the aqueduct on Main Street and Escondido Avenue in Hesperia. After deputies found a black 2017 Kia Forte submerged in the channel, water flow was shut off, according to a sheriff's department statement.
A dive team located the car about 1400 feet south of the Main Street Bridge. The body of a woman was found in the car, the statement continued.
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In March, a mother and two children died when their car went off the same stretch of road and into the aqueduct. A third child survived.
Linares' family members said they plan to call for safety improvements between the road and aqueduct to prevent more crashes. In a statement to NBC4, the California Department of Water Resources said, "An investigation by CHP is underway. We always want to ensure safety on State property and are looking into this."
Family of the mother and two children who died in a similar crash in the aqueduct supported the Linares family in calling for safer measures at the site.
"This is ridiculous, it should have never happened," Carlotta Estrada, the mother of the woman who died with her children in the March crash, said. "It's the exact, same thing. That obviouslt shows that there is something wrong right here."
The California Aqueduct carries water hundreds of miles from the base of the Sierra Nevada Mountains to the Bay Area and Southern California. It is mostly concrete lined channels.
NBC4's Jonathan Lloyd contributed to this report.
