Only a few days before Thanksgiving 2009 Medical Student John Edward Jones was at home in Utah visiting family with his wife, Emily, and their newborn daughter.
An avid spa, John together with his brother and nine other friends tried to wake up their love for playing noble again with a trip to the nut -like putty cave.
Without the father's knowledge in just over 24 hours, the cave would be his grave.
The utility Putty Cave system that they wanted to explore was generally considered a good 'beginners' cave for wannabe discoveries with its different sections labeled according to difficulty.
Despite his popularity with beginners, many game strugs still got stuck in the many narrow, winding passages of the Nutty Putty.
Between 1999 and 2004, six people got stuck in the cave and had to be saved, which led to the closure of the caves in 2006 for three years because of the fears of the local police that an incident could be fatal one day.
But because John and his friends fear the fear of being stuck was not something that seasoned explorers had to worry.
John, accompanied by his brother Josh, decided to take deeper into the depths of the cave to explore a section that is known as 'the birth canal' – an extremely challenging route that entailed Cavernous Area.
A savior from Utah Cave Rescue works to free John Jones from deep in the nutty Putty Cave
A commemorative plate for John Edward Jones outside the Natey Putty Cave. John died after he had stayed upside down for more than 24 hours in a narrow crack
The couple eventually came across an extremely tight opening in the walls and John who led the road, started to turn deeper into the passage.
Without the knowledge of the 26-year-old, he crawled until his death.
The couple had taken a wrong turn at the entrance of the birth canal and was now in a non -comprehensive part of the cave.
But John continued and still thought he was in the birth canal.
Eventually he came across a crack in the rock that almost came down for him, of which he thought he opened himself in a cave who would give him the chance to turn around.
John sucked in his chest to examine the crack and pushed his hull over a lip of rock and down in the 10-inch wide side of the crack.
He was in a dead end and when his chest was spreading, the six -feet long, 200ibs adult was stuck.
While he tried to free himself, he slid deeper into the hole where he was now upside down in a room that was only 10 by 18 inch was smaller than the entrance of a front-hand washing machine.
John with his wife Emily. Before the accident, the couple had just welcomed their first child and Emily was pregnant with their second
When Josh met his brother, he was shocked when he only saw his feet that stuck with his body head out of a narrow crack.
Josh spoke with local media at the time and described how John was 'swallowed' by the rock.
“It was really serious,” he added.
After trying to free his brother in vain, Josh went back to the surface to find help and soon attracted a large group of volunteers and professionals.
The first person who arrived on the spot was local rescue volunteer Susie.
After she had thrown her way through the tunnel with ropes tied to her feet, she finally met his captured body, almost three hours after he got stuck for the first time.
Although she had reassured John, she would have discovered him from the hole 'Likety split' Susie soon discovered that because of the tightness of the corner, and the limitedness of the cave, there was no way to maneuver his body out of the crack that He had been stuck in.
What happened in the coming hours was a brainstorming session of all members of the Rescue Party, which now included emergency services, to free John from his underground prison.
This included lubricating the walls and drilling pieces of rock, but the hard material and the uncomfortable position made drilling slow and painful work.
Eventually the team gave a plan to bring John to safety using a complex system of ropes and pulleys that they would confirm around his feet.
However, this took hours to install, which was not helped by the fact that the narrow -mindedness of the cave meant that only one person had direct access to John at the same time.
An avid spa, John together with his brother and nine other friends tried to regain their love for game struck with a trip to the nutty putty cave again
In the meantime John started to struggle. Had the blood turned upside down for hours that normally rose and was dug to his head instead.
He started to have problems with breathing and his heart beat twice as fast to prevent gravity to push the continuous blood flow out of his brain.
At this point his chances of escaping his perilous situation seemed high.
Slowly but surely John noticed that he was being abolished from his underground prison. He was able to communicate with his wife via a two -way radio that had been brought in.
At one point he was even high enough to make eye contact with the savior who was closest to him who asked him, “How are you?”
To which John replied: 'It is crazy. I'm upside down. I can't believe I'm upside down. '
“My legs kill me,” he added.
With John Almost out of the hole, the group decided to take a quick break, but when she grabbed the rope for the last time, a disaster hit.
One of the Poelie attached to the wall came loose – short knock -out one of the rescuers – so that John dived even deeper into the crack.
All hope was lost at the moment, after attempts to bind a fresh rope around John's leg, a savior made him almost got stuck.
After 27 hours in the hole, John was no longer responding.
One savior managed to crawl close enough to John to control his vitals, he noticed that his body was close to the temperature of the rocky walls of the cave.
He reported his findings to a paramedic who was able to go to John, just to confirm tragically that he had died.
The entrance of the Nuty Putty Cave. To prevent a future accident, the entrance of the passage was collapsed with controlled explosives and filled in with concrete
John's cause of death was portrayed as cardiac arrest and suffocation.
Emily refused to leave the nutty putty while her husband's body was still trapped and the local sheriff assured her that they would restore it.
However, it soon decided that it was too dangerous to try to restore his body. To prevent a future accident, the entrance of the passage was collapsed with controlled explosives and filled in with concrete.
“Once John was declared dead, there were discussions about” How do we get him out? ” There were also rather unsavory discussions, things that nobody really wanted to do, said Sgt Spencer Cannon at the time.
“Eventually the decision was made that it was too much risk for the rescuers to stay there in an attempt to get him out and the decision was made to leave him in place.”
Some players opposed the closure of the nut -like putty and a petition was started to save the cave, but failed.
In 2016, the tragedy was dramatized for the big screen in a film entitled The Last Descent.
As soon as it became clear that the remains could not be found, the entrance to the cave became an improvised monument for the family with a plaque that was also installed in memory of John.
John left his wife Emily and their daughter Lizzie.
Emily also expected their second child at the time of the accident. The following year a baby boy was born that she named after his father.
