Hikers, speedsters, drinkers kept police busy all Memorial Day weekend

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SALT LAKE CITY — The traditional weekend to kick off the summer turned out to be an extremely busy one for first responders.

The Memorial Day weekend — one of the first weekends Utahns had the chance to get out with fewer COVID-19 restrictions — kept police, Utah Highway Patrol troopers, and search and rescue crews hopping.

From Friday morning until Monday night, troopers made 4,732 traffic stops on Utah’s highways, including pulling over 119 motorists who were traveling at least 100 mph — a number that UHP Lt. Nick Street said is extremely high.

“It’s unprecedented,” he said.

The highest speed recorded by troopers over the weekend was 120 mph, Street said, followed by two drivers going 118 mph. The county where troopers pulled over the most drivers traveling at least 100 mph was Juab, followed by Beaver and and Tooele counties with 12 each. Millard, Box Elder and Washington counties rounded out the list of where the most excessive speeders were pulled over.

In addition, UHP troopers made 54 DUI arrests, responded to 182 crashes, became involved in two chases and arrested 17 people for reckless driving.

Despite those high numbers, Street said the UHP is grateful that there were no fatalities on the freeway.

Sadly, he said the same was not true for the state’s other roadways. Seven people were killed in seven separate crashes over the holiday weekend, according to statistics received by the UHP. Some of the incidents included:

Shantel Sponsler, 23, was hit by a vehicle and killed Friday about 11 p.m. near 1251 W. 3300 South.
A man was killed in a four-car crash about 3 a.m. Saturday on Redwood Road at 7800 South.
John Kratzer, 22, was hit and killed after stopping to help remove debris from the road from a crash he was not involved in near 12th Street and Monroe Blvd about 10:30 p.m. Friday.
A 56-year-old woman was hit and killed by a Ford F-150 while crossing the road in Ogden about 9:40 p.m. Saturday.
Trevor Shane John, 30, was ejected from his vehicle and killed in a rollover crash about 4:30 a.m. Sunday near Fort Duchesne. A 19-year-old was also injured.

In addition to being busy on the road, Street said the Department of Public Safety’s helicopter was utilized multiple times for search and rescue efforts, including searching for a missing kayaker on Strawberry Reservoir on Friday; hoisting a fall victim near Vernal in one rescue on Saturday and retrieving stranded hikers in Emery County in another; helping locate a lost hiker in Wayne County on Monday; and hoisting a “cliffed out” climber in Utah County also on Monday.

In Utah County, search and rescue crews responded to three injured hikers in separate incidents all within 30 minutes of each other.

But they weren’t done yet. Utah County Sheriff’s Sgt. Spencer Cannon said an 18-year-old Washington state man went off trail while hiking Mount Timpanogos, and “ledged out on a cliff face” at about 9,000 feet on Monday evening.

A helicopter dropped supplies for him to stay the night, and then performed a technical rescue Tuesday morning to get him off the mountain.

In Tooele County, a 36-year-old New Mexico man hiking the Deseret Peak Loop lost track of time on Monday and was not prepared for colder weather when the sun went down, according to the sheriff's office. He was rescued about 6:40 a.m. Tuesday.