Painful death: a man remained in a cave upside down forever (6 photos + 1 video)

In 2009, John Edward Jones, a physician, and his pregnant wife and young daughter visited their parents in Utah for Thanksgiving. An avid caver, John, his brother, and nine other friends set out for Nutty Putty Cave. Little did he know that 24 hours later, the cave would become his grave.





Nutty Putty was considered a great place for beginner explorers, with different sections marked according to difficulty. Despite its popularity, many cavers still got stuck in the narrow and winding passages. From 1999 to 2004, six people got stuck in the cave and were rescued. Due to the increasing number of incidents, Nutty Putty was closed in 2006 for three years.



The brothers decided to explore the depths of the cave to find an area known as the "Birth Canal" - an extremely narrow passage. Soon, John found an entrance that he believed was the beginning of the "Birth Canal". He began to crawl deeper almost upside down and realized that he was wrong. It seemed to him that he saw the long-awaited expansion ahead. John exhaled to reduce the volume of his chest and squeezed into the crevice. There was no expansion ahead. The man slid even deeper, where he found himself trapped upside down in a space 45 cm wide and 25 cm high.



When Josh reached his brother, he found that only his legs were sticking out of the narrow crevice. After futile attempts to help, Josh hurried to rescuers.

The first to arrive on the scene was caver Susie. She found John almost three hours after he got stuck. The girl promised John that she would quickly get him out of the trap, but soon realized that this was impossible.

Over the next few hours, everyone involved in the rescue operation, including emergency services, discussed how to free John from his underground confinement.



John with his wife Emily

They tried to lubricate the surface and drill holes, but the hardness of the rock and the awkward position made the work slow and painful.

Eventually, the team figured out how to pull the prisoner out using a complex system of ropes and pulleys. However, it took several hours to set it up, since only one person could get down to John due to the narrowness of the cave. By this point, the man's condition had worsened, he was having trouble breathing, his heart was beating twice as fast to resist gravity and force the constant flow of blood out of his brain. He was able to talk to his wife Emily on a radio they had brought him.

The team began to carefully lift John, he could even see the rescuer, who asked him: "How are you?" He replied: "Terrible. I'm upside down. My legs are killing me."

When he was almost to the surface, the group decided to take a short break. And then disaster struck. One of the pulleys attached to the wall broke, and John sank even deeper into the crevice.

The rescuer tried to tie a new rope around John's legs, but almost got stuck himself. After 27 hours of being trapped, John was no longer responding to what was happening. A doctor soon came down and pronounced the victim dead.



John's cause of death was listed as cardiac arrest and suffocation. Discussions began about how to get the body out. In the end, it was decided that the risk was not justified and the deceased would remain in the cave forever. After the tragedy, Patti-Natti was closed and a memorial plaque was installed in honor of John Jones. A few months later, Emily gave birth to a son, whom she named after his father.



In 2016, the film "The Last Descent" was released based on the tragic events.