Recent NAU grad who went missing found dead in desert, reportedly murdered by best friend

GILBERT, AZ (AZFamily) — We’ve learned that a missing persons case out of Gilbert has become a high-profile murder of a recent NAU graduate working as a project engineer.

Twenty-four-year-old Alijah Bradley was first reported as a missing person in mid-August.

Now we’ve learned where and how his remains were found in the desert, and the alleged suspect is his best friend.

This development took a lot of uncovering bit by bit because some of the case documents were sealed on Thursday.

Still, we now know when Alijah Bradley’s remains were found in the desert near Gila Bend just days after he was reported missing.

Alijah Bradley recently celebrated his 24th birthday. A recent NAU grad and project engineer, he is often seen smiling and joyous in pictures. That’s how his family remembers him.

They struggle to understand his recent murder, leading to the arrest of a friend Alijah trusted.

“You hear about this on podcasts and stuff, and like, you never think it would happen to somebody that you love,” said Alijah’s close relative, who asked to remain anonymous.

She said they reported Alijah missing to the Gilbert Police Department on Aug. 15.

He missed work; unusually, his mom hadn’t heard from him either.

They said Alijah’s mom had the Life360 app on her phone and tracked her son’s phone…to a place they knew.

“She signed back in and saw that his last location was at Sam’s apartment,” she said. “And then all of the sudden his phones were just off.”

The relative said 23-year-old Samuel Bush was a childhood friend of Alijah’s, but when confronted about Alijah’s phone pinging there last, he told his family he didn’t know where Alijah was.

That’s when Alijah’s family called Toyota to see if they could get the GPS coordinates of his car, which they relayed to police.

“They gave them the coordinates that the car was in the middle of nowhere,” she said.

The desolate desert near Gila Bend was a new lead for police.

That’s where they found not only his car but the remains of Alijah Bradley on Aug. 19, days after he was reported missing.

This relative described what they were told about the conditions, which were far more heinous than expected.

“I was told his cause of death was getting shot in the back and that they found him without his head,” she said. “And something so cruel and so graphic, like it’s almost crazy to think that somebody is capable of doing that.”

Sam Bush was arrested a day after the discovery, but at that point, only for growing and distributing marijuana and mushrooms from his apartment. Then, just this Wednesday, he was slapped with second-degree murder and concealing body parts charges, too.

As for motive, Alijah’s family is completely confused.

“We honestly don’t know. He was Sam’s best friend. He was Sam’s only friend,” she said.

While they hope to understand more in the coming weeks, they are choosing to celebrate a life well-lived...a life that was just getting started.

“Just how accomplished he was and how successful he was going to be or could have been,” she said.

Samuel Bush is now being held on a $1.5 million cash-only bond, which is an extremely high bond for a second-degree murder charge.

If you’d like to donate to Alijah’s family and funeral expenses, you can do that here.

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