John Edwards Jones, 26, the young man trapped in the crevice at the Nutty Putty Caves in Stansbury park, Utah was killed as rescuers desperately tried to save him, say Utah authorities. Jones was trapped upside down in a crevice that only 18 inches wide and 10 inches deep. He was trapped tightly in the middle of one of the narrowest crevices and could not move.
Said Sgt Spencer Cannon, “They had him to a level spot where he wasn’t heading downhill with his head below his feet.” Cannon added, “During the course of that, they have a raising system to hold him in position, and one of the devices of that system failed, and Mr. Jones actually fell back to the area where he had been stuck for so long.”
Rescuers were called to assist Jones soon after he got stuck but had a hard time getting to him because of the difficult and treacherous terrain.
“Getting people to him is very difficult,” Cannon said just before Jones died. “It is a tightly confined space. When there is movement, it is literally millimeters at a time.”
Nutty Putty Cave is a minor tourist attraction where visitors crawl on their bellies and move around different parts of the cave. Located about 28 miles west of Salt Lake City, the town of Stansbury attracts about 5,000 tourists each year.