Grantsville, Utah
July 19, 2014
A man died over the weekend after jumping into a huge ceremonial bonfire at a Utah event similar to the Nevada countercultural festival Burning Man, authorities said.
July 19, 2014
A man died over the weekend after jumping into a huge ceremonial bonfire at a Utah event similar to the Nevada countercultural festival Burning Man, authorities said.
The incident, which police are investigating
as a suicide, happened about 11 p.m. Saturday at the annual Element 11
festival in Grantsville, which is about 36 miles southwest of Salt Lake
City.
Grantsville police Lt. Steve Barrett said
the man had told some of the estimated 1,200 attendees in advance about
his plans to run into the fire. The three-story-tall effigy, modeled on a
character from the classic picture book "Where The Wild Things Are,"
had been burning for about 30 minutes and was fully engulfed when the
man crossed a safety perimeter about 50 feet from the structure and
jumped in, officials said.
"He was very fast; he was very motivated,"
J.P. Bernier, a spokesman for Element 11, told the Deseret News. "It
wasn't an accident or any act of negligence on anybody's part. He had a
very deliberate objective to get past our volunteers, past our safety
perimeter."
Firefighters immediately tried to douse the
flames, but were unable to save the man, Barrett said. Crews had
measured the fire temperature at 2,000 degrees just prior to the
apparent suicide.
Crews recovered the remains after the fire
was put out, Barrett said. The man was identified as Salt Lake City
resident Christopher Wallace.
Barrett said it was unknown whether drugs or
alcohol were involved in the incident. Relatives of Wallace could not
immediately be reached on Monday.
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