A Juab County sheriff's deputy died Sunday in a rollover near Delta as he returned from a search for a missing Kearns man.
Killed was:Tracy Davidson, 28, Nephi.
Davidson was killed in a 3 a.m. accident on the Brush Wellman Highway three miles west of the Intermountain Power Plant near Delta, a spokesman for the Millard County Sheriff's Office said.
Davidson's death was part of a nightmarish July 24th holiday weekend for the sheriff's office, which spent much of the weekend looking for the missing man, investigating the sinking of a stolen vehicle and overseeing thousands of holiday visitors.
Davidson was returning with two passengers from west Juab County when his Bronco drifted to the left and hit a concrete culvert guard. The vehicle then traveled off the right shoulder of the highway and rolled.
Davidson was ejected from the vehicle. His two passengers, Clinton Roundy, 26, and Brandon Hoffman, 23, both of Nephi, suffered minor injuries.
As Hoffman attended to Davidson's injuries, Roundy walked the three miles to the power plant to summon help. Two power plant employees returned with him to the scene of the accident and administered CPR to the injured deputy while ambulances were being dispatched from Delta.
Davidson was taken to the Delta Community Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead at 5:09 a.m. Hoffman was treated there and later released. Roundy was also treated at Delta and then transported by ambulance to Utah Valley Regional Medical Center in Provo. He was also released Sunday.
"Davidson had been to the desert with two men from Nephi who had seen the report regarding Jeff Allen, who has been missing for a week," said Juab County Sheriff David Carter. "The two men had seen what they thought might be a grave and had traveled to the site with Tracy (Davidson)."
The trip to the desert to the suspected burial site proved unhelpful in the search for Allen. "It turned out not to be a fresh grave," Carter said.
"His death is such an unexpected tragedy and we will miss him and the work he did for us. He was a good friend to all who worked in our department," Carter said of Davidson.
The search for Allen had still not proved to be fruitful, the sheriff said. "We have looked for him for three days, and his friends looked for him for four days before they notified us that he was missing."
Allen was last seen July 19 with a group of friends who had been target shooting and looking for arrowheads in an area about 16 miles north of Delta. Allen left the group on foot sometime before 7:30 a.m. and never returned, according to his friends.
The others said they searched for him for several hours and then assumed he had hitched a ride back to Salt Lake County. Police were not notified until July 23.
"This 24th holiday has proven to be a nightmare," Carter said.
In addition Davidson's death and the difficulty dealing with the large number of visitors to Juab County over the holiday weekend, deputies also investigated a report of a car stolen in West Valley City and abandoned at Mona Reservoir. "The car had been stripped out, the expensive tires exchanged for an old set, and the car set on fire and then pushed into Mona Reservoir," Carter said. "There were witnesses to the incident who contacted us."
"We had to call some of our deputies and search and rescue team in from the desert to recover the car," he said.