SALT LAKE CITY — The Iron County Sheriff’s Office on Thursday announced that the body of a man found in a field north of Kanarraville was the driver of a crashed vehicle located 20 days earlier.
On Feb. 29, deputies were called to a field at a farm where the body of a man was found. At the time, the man believed to be in his mid-20s could not be identified “due to the condition of the body and the lack of any personal identification documents. It appears cold weather was believed to be a contributing factor in the death,” the sheriff's office said Thursday in a prepared statement.
The body was taken to the Utah State Medical Examiner’s Office in an effort to determine the man’s identity and cause of death.
As the investigation continued, detectives determined the 22-year-old Taylorsville man was the registered owner of a vehicle found crashed and abandoned on I-15 during a snowstorm on Feb. 9, according to the sheriff's office.
“The condition of the body and other preliminary findings indicate the extreme cold weather and snowfall, on the day of the crash, caused the male to succumb to the environmental conditions after he walked away from the vehicle toward the town of Kanaraville,” the sheriff’s office said.
The body was found less than a mile from the crash, said Iron County Sheriff’s Lt. Del Schlosser. Investigators do not believe the man suffered critical injuries in the crash, which involved the victim’s car sliding off the road into the median and hitting the cable barrier during a heavy snowstorm.
As a trooper arrived on scene, he could see a man who had crossed the freeway and was walking away from the scene wearing a coat, Schlosser said. But the trooper was unable to get to the man or find a place on the freeway that he could turn his patrol car around before the man disappeared, he said. And because of the storm, his footprints in the snow were quickly covered up.
When the body was found, the victim was not wearing a coat. Schlosser said detectives believe due to hypothermia, which causes a person to believe their body is actually too warm, the man discarded his coat and then died as a result of the weather. No foul play is suspected, Schlosser said.
As of Thursday, the man's coat had not been found.
The name of the man was not released Thursday pending notification of family members.