Two men held for setting deadly traps on popular hiking trail
Police say Benjamin Steven Rutkowski, 19, and Kai Matthew Christensen, 21, of Provo, confessed to setting trip wires that could send a 20lb ball of spiked branches into a person’s head, or trip a passerby into a bed of wooden stakes.
Two men have been arrested for placing potentially deadly booby traps on a popular Utah hiking trail.
Police say Benjamin Steven Rutkowski, 19, and Kai Matthew Christensen, 21, of Provo, confessed to setting trip wires that could send a 20lb ball of spiked branches into a person’s head, or trip a passerby into a bed of wooden stakes.
The traps were discovered along the Big Springs trail in Provo Canyon last Saturday by a military-trained officer on foot patrol - before anyone was hurt.
Local Fox News 13 reports U.S. Forest Service officer James Schoeffler was doing a routine foot patrol of the South Fork Canyon when he spotted the traps outside a building used by families and young hikers, called The Fort.
The crude traps were designed to activate when a person entered the shelter.
When tripped, one of the traps released a ball of wooden spikes tied to a rock with rope swinging from a tree.
At a second entrance to The Fort, another trap was meant to cause a person to fall onto spikes sticking up from a bed of dirt, investigators told the network. Police say they were able to identify the two men through a series of Facebook contacts after speaking to locals familiar with the trails.
Rutkowski and Christensen were booked on counts of reckless endangerment.
Police said they would have faced felony charges had the traps activated.
It was not known at press time what the motivation was behind the traps.
Deputies told Fox 13 it does not appear the suspects were attempting to hide anything, and they seem to have been set for fun.
Forest Service spokesman Sergeant Spencer Cannon told the station: ‘We hope that they learn a lesson from this.
‘Our point isn’t to get someone arrested. Our point is to get someone to change the behavior and if this helps them to do that by going to jail, that’s what we want.’