Grant Gardner, a Minnesota man who left for a three-day hiking trip and was last heard from on July 29, was found dead in Bighorn National Forest in Wyoming, according to the Big Horn County Sheriff’s Office. Big Horn County Sheriff’s Office
(BIG HORN COUNTY, Wyo.) — After being missing for nearly a month, a man who had left for a three-day hike in Wyoming was found dead in Bighorn National Forest, authorities said.
“While it’s not the outcome we hoped for, we are hopeful this will provide much needed peace and closure to the family,” the Big Horn County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement on Thursday.
Grant Gardner, a Minnesota man who had planned on a three-day hike “through the Misty Moon Lake area, eventually summiting Cloud Peak,” which is the highest peak within Bighorn National Forest, was last heard from on July 29, when he contacted his wife, saying he had made it to the summit, the sheriff’s office said.
Phone records revealed that he had reached the summit at Cloud Peak — which is around 13,000 feet — at approximately 7 p.m., which was concerning to officials due to the “lack of visible trails through cliffs, timer line, boulder fields and other hazards that had to be navigated after dark before reaching clear trails and safe terrain,” officials said.
Since then, officials said “there has not been any contact with Gardner.”
On Tuesday, a professional climbing team from North Carolina “summited Cloud Peak and descended to the northern route of the peak,” the sheriff’s office said. When the team was establishing a high-altitude camp for the evening, they “noticed a slight reflection a few hundred feet above them underneath a ledge,” and were “confident it was a backpack,” the sheriff’s office said.
But due to nightfall approaching, further investigation would be “too dangerous,” so the team notified the sheriff’s office via satellite, officials said.
Then on Wednesday, teams from the sheriff’s office were launched and “Grant Gardner’s remains were located near the backpack” and he was wearing “clothing that very closely matched the terrain he was climbing in,” officials said.
The body was recovered in one of the two primary search areas, “very closely matching one of the highest probability scenarios,” officials said.
“It is noteworthy that this area had been covered by air and other means, underscoring how difficult this mission has been,” the sheriff’s office said.
Bighorn National Forest is over 1 million acres, with 191,000 acres dedicated to the Cloud Peak Wilderness area, which is where Gardner is believed to have been traveling, according to the U.S. Forest Service.
While the case has been transferred to the Big Horn County Coroner’s Office to determine the time, manner and cause of death, officials said they believe Gardner “succumbed to a tragic accident as we all have surmised.”
Prior to the discovery of Gardner’s body, officials had suspended search efforts for the hiker, saying that his “most optimistic survival odds have run out.”
“I have made the heartbreaking and difficult decision to suspend active search and rescue operations for Mr. Gardner. Our teams have exhausted all resources and personnel over the last 20 days. With weather conditions and other factors updated in our search models, we have to face the reality that the most optimistic survival odds have run out,” Big Horn County Sheriff Ken Blackburn said in a statement last week.
Now, after this “dangerous” recovery, Gardner’s body will be “brought home to his family,” officials said.
Craig Hudson for The Washington Post via Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump is seeking an expedited deposition from News Corp. owner Rupert Murdoch within the next 15 days as part of his defamation lawsuit against Murdoch and the Wall Street Journal.
Trump filed the $10 billion suit earlier this month after the Journal reported that Trump allegedly sent Epstein a bawdy letter in 2003 that was included in a book made for Epstein’s 50th birthday, which Trump has denied.
Epstein, a wealthy financier, was convicted in 2008 for sex trafficking of minors then was arrested again in 2019 and died by suicide in jail shortly thereafter.
In a court filing on Monday, Trump’s attorneys said they are seeking the expedited deposition in part due to Murdoch’s “age and health,” noting he is now 94 years old.
The filing also reiterated their claim that Trump reached out directly to Murdoch before the article was published to tell him the letter was fake, and that Murdoch allegedly replied that “he would take care of it.”
Murdoch’s direct involvement, Trump’s attorneys say, “further underscores Defendants’ actual malice and intent behind the decision to publish the false, defamatory, disparaging, and inflammatory statements about President Trump identified in the Complaint.”
“Because Murdoch is a director and majority owner of News Corp, he sits in the unique position of having readily available all documents, communications, and other information related to the Article and the decision to publish it,” the filing states.
“Moreover, if the purported letter in the Article somehow actually exists, which it does not, and the Defendants have it in their possession, which they do not, Murdoch has easy access to it,” says the filing.
The filing says Trump’s lawyers communicated their request to Murdoch’s attorneys via phone.
The judge ordered Murdoch to file a response to Trump’s motion by Aug. 4.
In response to the suit, a spokesperson for Journal owner Dow Jones said, “We have full confidence in the rigor and accuracy of our reporting, and will vigorously defend against any lawsuit.”
(PAWLEYS ISLAND, S.C.) — A Georgia father drowned after saving five people from a rip current at a beach in South Carolina, according to the Pawleys Island Police Department.
At approximately 4:45 p.m. on Sunday, police received a call for “multiple swimmers in distress” in Pawleys Island, South Carolina, and once on the scene, they discovered one person was missing and a “search was initiated.”
Then at approximately 6:15 p.m., the body of the missing person was found and identified as 38-year-old Chase Childers, officials said.
Officials later found out that Childers — a former professional baseball player for the Baltimore Orioles’ minor league team and police officer — and one other individual entered the water to help a family of five, with Childers getting “caught in the rip current.”
“He died trying to save others,” police said.
Childers’ family said in a statement that they are “devastated by the tragic loss of our beloved Chase Childers” and that the news feels “surreal, incredibly hard to grasp and profoundly unfair.”
His family described his death as a “heroic act,” where he paid the “highest sacrifice with his life in front of his three children and wife.”
“Word are hard to find at the moment,” the family said in a statement shared on social media.
Childers leaves behind three children and his wife, the family said. He would have turned 39 next month, his brother-in-law confirmed to ABC News.
