Deputy Howard Knott lost his life in a cloudburst in Keene that swept him and another man to their deaths.

Deputy Knott, 56, Chief Civil Deputy Sheriff of Kern County, was found 2 ½ miles below Keene.

Deputy Knott and Deputy Jepson were in route to Inyo-Kern to serve official papers and were blocked by flood waters at Tehachapi. While returning to Bakersfield, they stopped at Keene for a cup of coffee a few minutes before the disaster.

Deputy Jepson, witness to the cloudburst which sent an eight foot was of water roaring out of Water Canyon into the mountain community, said the Thompson brothers and Knott were in the El Rita store and the adjacent station at Keene when it was smashed by the flood.