John Edward Jones, a 26-year-old medical student and a father of one, suffered the worst death ever when he got stuck into a claustrophobic passageway just 10 inches high and 18 inches wide in November 2009.
Jones, his brother, and a group of friends went cave exploring at Utah’s Nutty Putty Cave, a passion of Jones, when he somehow turned to the unmapped space which was so tight that he was unable to move or free himself. His brother got outside of the cave and raised the alarm which triggered a rescue operation that lasted more than 27 hours.
Rescue teams worked around the clock, taking turns as they tried to free him from the narrow passage and his difficult position. But as the hours passed, Jones’ condition worsened. Hanging upside down for so long caused blood to surge toward his head and placed tremendous stress on his heart.
“Seeing his feet and seeing how swallowed he was by the rock, that’s when I knew it was serious,” Jones’ brother Josh told the Salt Lake Tribune. “It was really serious.”
Josh even managed to lift his brother an inch, but the moment he let go of him, Jones slid back into the narrow passage.
One of Jones’ friends, Brandon Kowallis, explained that Jones drifted in and out of consciousness. During the rescue mission, rescuers brought down a radio so Jones could speak to his family who prayed for him and assured him everything was going to be all right, Metro reported.
“I think it was his father, mother, and wife who spoke to him,” Kowallis recalled. “They told him they loved him and were praying for him. His father gave him a blessing. His wife mentioned a feeling of peace, that everything would be OK.”
According to the rescuers, they tried to tied ropes around his feet in order to pull him out. That’s when a rescuer asked him how he was, to what Jones responded, “It sucks. I’m upside down. I can’t believe I’m upside down. My legs are killing me.”
At one moment, the rope suddenly lost tension and threw the team backward. A pulley had snapped and sent Jones even deeper. After more than 25 hours stuck, John had become unresponsive and his body was shutting down.
According to Kowallis, the scene looked “very bleak,” and the hopes of rescue were bleak. “It looked like he could only be lifted another foot or two in his current position,” he explained, per LadBible. “His feet would hit the ceiling, with no room to manoeuvre.”
Eventually, Jones suffered a cardiac arrest and suffocated. His body was never retrieved because it was deemed too dangerous. Authorities sealed the passage with explosives, making Nutty Putty Cave a permanent tomb.
Even today, there is a memorial plaque at the cave’s entrance which serves as a reminder of that tragic day.
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Bored Daddy
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