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Subscribe to RSSTwo Utah men are facing charges of reckless endangerment after allegedly setting medieval-style booby traps near a popular hiking trail. KSL-TV's Sandra Yi reports.
Two Utah men are facing charges of reckless endangerment after allegedly setting medieval-style booby traps, including one with sharpened sticks wrapped around a 20-pound rock, near a popular hiking trail south of Salt Lake City.
Authorities said that Benjamin Rutkowski, 19, and Kai Christensen, 21, both from Utah County, admitted they had set up two traps to capture wild animals at a makeshift resting area, known as “the fort” to locals along the Big Springs Trail in Provo Canyon.
“You don’t expect to have to be trained to identify booby traps when you are just outside enjoying nature,” Utah County Sheriff’s Sgt. Spencer Cannon told KSL-TV, an NBC News affiliate in Salt Lake City. “Both had potential to cause very serious injuries to people.”
View KSL-TV’s Sandra Yi’s report from “the fort.”
The traps, including one with sharpened sticks wrapped around a 20-pound rock, had been rigged to trip wires in a popular area used by hikers, mountain bikers and families accessing wilderness areas.
“It makes me sad that some people choose to do things that would hurt other people,” Melissa Lee, an Orem, Utah, resident told KSL-TV.
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Leave a Comment:
OMG - and on a popular hiking trail? These guys are so past stupid.
If you buy that those were to "catch animals" you are a fool. These punks are dangerous.
Lock em up.
Throw away the key.
Utah? Need we say anymore?
Overlord,
yeah, you should say more.....
WOW! It really makes me upset that we have to worry about these kinds of people where we live! Who knows it could have been kids or something hit by that! What I'd like to know is what was going through their heads in the process
Really this is national news? I mean of course it is horrible that these young men have nothing better to do in life. However I am glad they were able to find these traps and donkeys before anyone was hurt.
I don't know maybe it's me but if they wanted to make this story more interesting they may have tried by saying the young men were setting up traps using skittles.
Once again award winning journalism here. Thanks Sandra Yi/MSNBC
Its news - because its unlikeliy that the traps were set for"animals" its slim to non-existent. Not when the target height is 4 to 5 feet off the ground.
Not many 4-footed animals walk upright.
I'd rather read this story than one after their traps hurt someone. Just saying.
Glad they caught these wankers.
LoLa/Beoweolf
I definitely agree with what your saying, however it's still sounds like a slow news day to me.
Beoweolf - I agree completely. I think it's interested that the article states they planned to "capture" animals with the traps. I see a big difference between capturing and killing or maiming.
Definitely local news material. National...eh. But still better than the national news story of death or serious injury.
Yeah I agree, looks like a set of S - E - R - I - A - L .... K - I - L - L - E - R - S in the making. A trap to kill just for the sake of killing. Premediated. Planned. And even much effort exhaulted with creating the weapons.
These dangers to society SHOULD BE LOCKED AWAY FOR LIFE!
they had NO intention of hunting animals with these booby traps. why would they have put them into the entrance of a fort people use for shelter (that was in the other article, don't know about this one)
Anybody know anything about these two guys?
Bill
This is exactly what I'm talking about with the award winning journalism
To Suds, Bill and fnkheehaw just a scientific wilda$$ guess but I'd say those creatures are pure sociopaths.
That was my impression, Dean. Nobody hunts along known hiking trails. That story sounds like BS to me. Overall, it sounds like they caught a budding pair of potential serial killers, looking to see what damage they would do. Scary kids who need to be locked away and treated seriously, that is not normal fun and games for boys.
Is it the booby trap that is the issue... or that the traps were of an ancient style?
Because I would bet you that some of the mini-fortresses around Utah have much more modern "trappings" (pun inteded) despite the insistance of so many that all of Utah is still in the dark ages.
When the media came to look at our "blotter", we always tried to discourage them from printing/broadcasting cases that could inspire similar incidents by hinting that a charge of criminal accessory may be "bad press", should a perp state that he got the idea from the media. This allowed the "freedom of the press" folks to decide for themselves what they wished to publish, which usually eliminated the details of the recipe and method and centered on the basic crime, victims, perps & punishment. That's all that's necessary.
it does not matter what the police believe,most police are single minded imbeciles. This is why we have a judge and jury system, you get to tell your case to intelligent, trained people who then apply justice .
And in what way are jury members required to be intelligent OR trained???
A dream world would have justice delivered by intelligent, trained (and perhaps even caring) people and justice would be applied. Dream world, not the one most of us live in indeed.
4283277: you must be an unsuccessful defense attorney, by your descriptive post.
In a month or two they'll probably find a pot plantation springing up in that area.
Wild Bill,
I think you're onto something here!!!!
I'm glad no boobies were injured, those sticks look like they could do some damage
Sounds like they were hunting humans to me......
Can anyone else hear the banjos playing?
Perhaps these 2 forgot that woolly mammoths, giant sloths,short-faced bears, etc. all went extinct at the end of the Pleistocene (Ice Age).
I'm always amused at the people who complain about news articles. It's like they'd rather hear about some poor kid getting mashed in the face and mangled, than hear about something like this being stopped before anything bad happened.
Anyone who complains about this stuff being "lame and boring" or "Slow news day" strike me as the types of get off on reading about someone getting hurt or killed.
I for one am glad that nobody was hurt when these boobs decided to go medieval.
I do give them credit though for the inventions. Instead of creating homemade bombs that have the capability to blow up at any time (triggered or not) these guys used a 20lbs rock for a booby trap.
In a case like this you wonder if maybe it isn't such a bad idea to bring back "eye-for-an-eye" punishment. Once these clowns are convicted, booby-trap some woods and make them wander around. That would also discourage copycats.
Were these guys enviromentalists? during my motorcycle and 4x4 days I have had these wacko's dig pits, pull guns, lay out spikes and just cause trouble in general. just curious?
Anyone remember the incident where a piano wire was strung across an ATV trail - killing a rider when it struck his neck?
The people who set these traps are grown up versions of the "sicko" high school teens who put pins or razor blades in soap bars in biology labs. Or - maybe the ones who hand another student a hot piece of glass in the chemistry lab. Or - the ones who put urine in a squirt gun and shoot other students with it.
Schools need to turn these cases over to authorities for arrest and punishment. Open juvinile detention centers and put these "sickos" in them - make them go to school seven days a week.
Well said, brickwall!
Brickwall, I agree also. They do sound like high school kids. The kids that drop things off a bridge and it hits a car. "Oh, we didn't expect it to actually HIT something". BTW, never heard of the squirt gun thing....yuck.
Good comment (can you hear the banjos playing)these two boys were not thinking.they have to be mentally challenged.The comment is profiling but funny.
geesh Brickwall, somebody shove you in your locker when you were in school? just curious.
There actually might be something to the "sociopath comment", It is a well known fact that they usually begin their careers by torturing and killing animals and torturing smaller weaker people. But not all those who became known serial killers followed that mold.
Glad they caught the dimwits and removed the traps before someone was seriously injured or killed. Kinda makes the statement "Be aware of your surroundings" a bit more relevant.
Medieval?? Try Vietnam, and with poo smeared on them.
Gosh, I sure hope we get things moving in the US again...too many people out of work and too much time to dream silly things up...
Dream silly things up? Are you kiddng me? These two are a serious danger. I doubt they would be able to handle jobs, so I don't think "time on their hands" is the problem. Mentally disturbed, very harmful people.
Yeah I agree, looks like a set of S - E - R - I - A - L .... K - I - L - L - E - R - S in the making. A trap to kill just for the sake of killing. Premediated. Planned. And even much effort exhaulted with creating the weapons.
These dangers to society SHOULD BE LOCKED AWAY FOR LIFE!
These creeps need to be followed around. Next we will find people maimed or dead. But, you know, they will get out to harm again. They will just learn how to do it and not get caught.
Disgusting trash camouflaged as people.
Just part of their punishment should be the hard manual labor of building, reparing and maintaining trails, using their weekend time, maybe for a couple of years.
Do they look like Obama`s sons?
No, they look like you.
It is disgusting whatever their motive, hurting innocent animals or innocent humans. IMHO any human being that derives 'pleasure' from the suffering of another living being should be removed from the gene pool. We really don't need them to reproduce or harm children.
Jerry, thanks for the contribution. Sheesh...