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Show Plane crash and drowning victims Tragic accidents claim lives of two local youths By GARY R. BLODGETT f Separate tragic accidents claimed the lives of two Davis County young people over the weekend. A three-year-old Woods Cross boy, Brandon McMulley, was killed kil-led when he was thrown from a small plane that crashed shortly after af-ter takeoff from a dirt road in Skull Valley, Tooele County. A 19-year-old man, Kenneth David Yanez, of Layton, drowned Sunday afternoon in a pond east of the Valley View Golf Course (about (ab-out 1700 E. Gentile) in Layton. Yanez was reportedly swimming with four friends in the deep irrigation irriga-tion storage pond referred to as Company's Pond. Layton Police Chief Doyle Talbot Tal-bot said there are frequent violations viola-tions of trespassing by young people peo-ple at all three of Layton's major ponds owned by the local irrigation company. "We had a drowning in Andy's Pond two years ago and in prior years Hobb's Pond was the site of several drownings," said Chief Talbot. "There is always a problem prob-lem of swimmers and boaters on all of the ponds." He emphasized that it is illegal and inappropriate for anyone to swim or boat on any of the three ponds. They are privately owned and are posted against swimming and boating. "But year after year the signs against swimming, boating and trespassing are torn down and our officers are continually asking tresspassers tress-passers to leave the premises," he said. Witnesses said Yanez and his friends were playing at the edge of the pond when the accident occurred. occur-red. Kevin Allred of the Layton Police Department said that the young man apparently swung out over the water from a rope attached to a tree. Witnesses told investigating officers that Yanez went underwater underwa-ter and when he surfaced, he began O CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 Accidents claim victims CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 swimming to shore but disappeared dis-appeared underwater again. After not resurfacing, others ran for help and the Davis County Sheriffs Department was notified shortly after 3 p.m. Layton police were also alerted and Police Officer Offic-er Reed Heslop, one of the first to arrive at the scene, dove in and retrieved Mr. Yanez. Others assisted in getting Yanez to shore where support teams from several local law enforcement agencies immediately began emergency medical treatment and kept up the effort until Yanez was loaded aboard a Lifeflight helicopter helicop-ter for airlifting to a Salt Lake City hospital where he was pronounced dead. Officer Allred said the victim . was in the water between 45 mi-'. mi-'. nutes to an hour. Search and rescue res-cue teams were notified in Weber and Salt Lake Counties, but the victim was retrieved before they arrived. In the airplane accident, Bran don was sitting on his mother's lap in the small, single-engine plajne and was ejected from the plane upon impact. His mother, Jill, and the pilot were reportedly belted in and were not seriously injured. Tooele County Sheriff Don Proctor said the accident happened about 11:20 a.m., one-quarter mile south of Interstate Highway 80 near Rawley Junction. He said the plane, along with two other privately owned planes, had landed at Rawley Junction on a nearby dirt road and the occupants had eaten breakfast at Teddy Bear's Restaurant. After taking off, two planes headed upwind while the victim's plane turned south with the wind, lost power and its left wing struck the ground, cartwheeling the plane, and apparently ejecting the , child at that time, according to Sgt. Doug Broadway of the Tooele County Sheriffs Department. The child was airlifted by a medical ambulance helicopter to Primary Children's Hospital where he died. |