The search for a missing Arizona resort worker is entering a new phase, because the floodwater that made the ground impossible to search has gone. Benny Sutton Jr., 63, an employee of the Castle Hot Springs Resort in Morristown, Yavapai County, has not been seen since Sunday, November 1, 2026, when he left home to report for work and never arrived. His truck was found fully submerged in a flooded wash about two miles downstream from the resort, and in its Friday, November 6 update the Yavapai County Sheriff's Office (YCSO) said the wash is now completely dry — "allowing search personnel to drive and walk directly through the area" — while the search for Sutton continues.

The sheriff's office account, reported by PEOPLE (David Chiu, November 6), is a timeline of a working man disappearing into a storm. Sutton left home on November 1 to report to work at Castle Hot Springs — a resort in the desert northwest of Phoenix, reached by roads that cross the normally dry washes of Yavapai County — but he never showed up, officials say. Search teams were launched over the weekend after his vehicle was discovered in the wash, about two miles downstream from the resort, according to the Yavapai County Sheriff's Office.

What searchers found first was the truck, not the man. A helicopter that was already in the area completing a separate water rescue lowered a rescuer onto the roof of the submerged truck, and "the rescuer confirmed Sutton was not inside," the sheriff's office wrote on Wednesday, November 4. That single check reshaped the search: Sutton had not been trapped in the vehicle, which meant he could have left it — on foot, in moving water, somewhere along a flooded desert channel — and the search became a search of the wash itself.

How the search has unfolded

The conditions dictated the order of the work. Because of the hazard, overnight search efforts could only be done from the air; after the floodwaters receded the following day, officials deployed swift-water rescue teams, ground searchers and K9 tracking units into the wash, the sheriff's office said. Television coverage of the search likewise described teams, dogs and helicopters continuing to look for Sutton. It is the standard sequence for a desert-wash search — aircraft while the water is up, specialists in the water as it falls, and dogs and ground teams once the channel can be walked — and in Sutton's case each stage has so far ended without finding him.

The effort has not been cursory. During the first two days of search efforts, the sheriff's office said, teams "spent 16 to 18 hours investigating every object" they could, but have so far found only "possible minor clues." The office has not described what those possible clues were, and it has not said that Sutton was swept away — only that he is missing, that his truck was found in the floodwater, and that the search continues. The November 6 update is the first to describe the wash as completely dry, which changes what searchers can do: a dry channel can be driven, walked and re-examined object by object in a way a flooded one cannot.

The storm behind the search

Sutton disappeared into the same severe weather that struck the Southwest over the weekend of November 1, when heavy rainfall caused flash flooding across the region. The Arizona Republic has reported two deaths attributed to the bad weather so far, PEOPLE reported — Sutton's is the search that remains open. The National Weather Service in Flagstaff had flooding in Yavapai County under an advisory that Sunday, warning of flooding in creeks and normally dry washes, dangerous flooding over low-water crossings, and between one and two inches of rain already fallen, with Castle Creek and Castle Hot Springs themselves among the locations expected to flood and State Route 69 and Interstate 17 among the highways affected.

That geography is the background every Arizona driver learns, and it is worth stating plainly for readers elsewhere: a wash is a desert channel that is dry most of the year and becomes a river in minutes when rain falls upstream. At the peak of this flooding, the Yavapai County Sheriff's Office said, the waterway where Sutton's truck was found "spanned approximately 200 feet wide and reached depths of six to eight feet." A channel that wide and that deep is not a puddle to be crossed; it is a current strong enough to carry a truck two miles downstream and submerge it completely, which is what the sheriff's office says happened to Sutton's vehicle.

Who searchers are looking for — and how to help

The sheriff's office describes Sutton as 5 feet 9 inches tall and 175 pounds, with gray hair and blue eyes. He was last seen wearing tan shorts and a light blue button-up shirt with a Castle Hot Springs logo on the left pocket — his work clothes, consistent with a man on his way to a shift. The Yavapai County Sheriff's Office is the investigating agency, and its number for information is (928) 771-3260; in an emergency, call 911. For Punjabi truckers who run Interstate 17 and the Phoenix-area corridors — the same highways the Weather Service listed in its flood advisory — the case is also a road lesson the sheriff's updates keep teaching: in desert country, a flooded low-water crossing is a stop sign, not a challenge, whatever the schedule says.

What happens next is a ground search of a dry wash. With the water gone, search personnel can drive and walk directly through the area where the truck was found and downstream from it, re-checking the objects the first two days' work logged and following the possible minor clues the sheriff's office mentioned. The office has announced no end date for the search and no news conference; its next public step will be a further update if Sutton is found or if the search changes shape. Until then, Benny Sutton Jr. remains what he has been since November 1: a 63-year-old man who left for work and did not arrive, and whose family is waiting on a dry desert channel in Yavapai County for an answer.