While looking for the gun a Utah Highway Patrol trooper used to shoot himself, searchers found an underwater dumping ground in the Jordan River.
Salt Lake and Davis County deputy sheriffs searched the river near I-215 Thursday for the .22-caliber rifle Trooper Michael Lietch used to stage an attack on himself.They didn't find that gun. But they did find another rifle, five pay phones, partial phone booths, various car parts including stereos and rusty pieces of car frames, a VCR, pots and pans and bike frames. Divers also found a bucket weighted with Mexican coins Tuesday.
"We've been out there with metal detectors and pulled up everything but the kitchen sink," said Salt Lake County Sheriff's Capt. Bruce Thayn.
County search-and-rescue teams abandoned the search Thursday afternoon after UHP officials announced Lietch's fabrication. But Thayn reassured, "We would have continued to look for it if it had been like he said it was."
Thayn said not finding Lietch's rifle will not affect the action being taken against Leitch.
"There's so much slime, mud, rebar, partial frames of cars and metal down there that the metal detectors can't identify the rifle," Thayn said. "In a cost-effectiveness analysis of what we'd do with the gun once we found it, and it isn't worth it to keep looking."
The underwater junk heap officers discovered is not unusual. Thayn said most bridges over rivers are commonly used by drivers as accessible garbage-launching points. "It's not uncommon for people to stop their trailers and dump over the side of a bridge rather than go to a dump."
Sheriff's officials have no plans to clear the dump, he said. "It would be a major project to clean up."