Someone's been watching a bit too much Hunger Games: Two Utah men were arrested for planting deadly booby traps along a popular hiking trail in Provo Canyon. Luckily, the medieval-looking traps didn't have the chance to hurt anyone before they were discovered:
The devices were designed to trip when a person entered The Fort. One of the traps would have released a spiked ball and another would have caused a person to fall onto sharpened sticks pointing up from the ground.
“That would kill people, easily, easily kill people,” said hiker Emily Hammerstad. “It’s just awful and sickening that people would do that kind of thing.”
Through Facebook contacts, deputies were able to identify two suspects. They arrested 21-year-old Kai Matthew Christensen, of Provo, and 19-year-old Benjamin Steven Rutkowski. Police said they confessed to placing the traps.
Deputies said there was not any indication that these two were trying to protect anything or hide anything. It appears to have been for fun.
hikers started doing this when the mountain bike
craze began. I carried a wire cutter for a while, there were so many of them. My guess is that one person was responsable for them all, but there were stylistic differences... The dog would always point out these things. He also found watches, jewelry, bike parts (rough trails) and one time dug through about four inches of overburden to unearth a small gold chain. Hound dogs live in another world of
perception.