Man’s body found by family hours after crashed car towed away, Utah troopers say
A man’s family found his body hours after a crashed car without a driver was towed away, Utah authorities said.
Troopers responded to a single-car crash on Wednesday, Feb. 22, at around 1:30 a.m. and found a car “with minimal damage” that had “slid off the road” and into a ditch off State Route 13 in Box Elder County, the Utah Department of Public Safety said in a news release.
They could not find the driver at the crash site and coordinated with the car’s owner to have it towed, troopers said.
A family member told troopers that 19-year-old Samuel Slade of Layton “should have been driving the car,” the department said. They were unsure where he was.
Troopers worked with the family to search for Slade, the department said.
They couldn’t find him but, after talking with family, learned it was possible he was at a friend’s house, the department said. Troopers then stopped searching.
But family members contacted troopers later that morning to say Slade had still not come home, so they started searching again, the department said.
Slade’s family, however, found his body “within one-half mile of the crash site,” the department said.
The department said it is investigating the crash, while the Box Elder County Sheriff’s Office is investigating Slade’s death.
Box Elder County is about 160 miles northwest of Salt Lake City.
