Nutty Putty rescuer shuts down chilling theory about cave victim’s final moments 17 years on
The last person to see Nutty Putty victim John Edward Jones alive has shut down a theory about his last moments.
John was a 26-year-old medical student from Utah who went into the Nutty Putty Cave with his brother Josh, where they scouted out a narrow passage called the 'Birth Canal' where there was space to turn around at the end.
However, John travelled down an unmapped passageway and entered a narrow downward fissure with no turnaround and became trapped headfirst in a gap 10 inches by 18 inches wide.
Rescuers spent 27 hours trying to save him but they couldn't get him out and John became unresponsive, with his cause of death being given as cardiac arrest and suffocation.
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The last person to see John alive was Brandon Kowallis, who has answered some of the questions people have about the rescue attempt and shut down the theory that the rescuers had euthanised him when they realised they couldn't get him out.
"Was John given a mercy dose of sedative once the rescue failed?" he said in his video as he mentioned one of the questions people kept asking him.
"There’s some conspiracy theories out there that rescuers had just gotten tired and didn’t want to deal with it, and so they gave him a mercy dose, a mercy killing of some sedative or extreme painkiller or whatever.
"That absolutely did not happen.”
"To those of you who are into those conspiracy theories, Abraham Lincoln once said, and I really like this quote, he said something like, 'I would rather trust and occasionally be disappointed than distrust and be miserable all the time'."
Brandon shut down the conspiracy theory hard as he declared he could 'say with absolute certainty' John wasn't given a sedative.
"Could John have backed out himself if he had stopped earlier?"
Answering other people's questions, one of the things people wanted to know was whether or not John was stuck the moment he went the wrong way in the Nutty Putty Cave or if he'd have been fine if he stopped sooner.
Answering this one, Brandon was clear: "If John had stopped 10ft sooner he would have been able to get out. No question at all."
He'd described the space the cave diver got stuck in as a 'little slot you climb through' into a 'tube' which reaches 'the window that you climb through'.
"After that point, that's when if you go head first and you get your body all the way through, you've hit the point of no return.
"So if he had stopped just right where that window was, like with his head poking down, he would have easily, no problem at all, gotten out.
"It was just the the difference of just a few feet which is crazy."
"Was rescue truly impossible?"
Trapped underground, upside down and stuck in place was a bad situation for John to be in, and though rescuers worked for a long time they weren't able to get him out.
Brandon had previously said they'd spent hours with a jackhammer in the Nutty Putty Cave trying to break up rocks and clear a way to John, but realised it would take 'anywhere from three to seven days' to get him out that way.
Answering the question of whether it was impossible to rescue John, Brandon said: "It was truly impossible because of the fact that he was upside down.
"Like that is the one variable. That is the tiny little hinge upon which all of this pivoted. Had he gone in there feet first, we would have got him out. No doubt in my mind."
John Edward Jones' final moments
When asked if John had died earlier than reported, Brandon said it was 'not much earlier'.
He explained that John had fallen unconscious and Brandon had gone back out to talk to search and rescue, and when he went back in he heard noises from the man's body.
He said: "Went back in, and again, I'm talking like, 'Hey, John, we're we're going to do everything we can to get you out of here.
"That second time when I was down there, about an hour between I got there to where John was, went up there and talked to him back down.
"That was about an hour that passed. At that point I heard him making noises that later the paramedics were like, 'Yeah, that's that's what most bodies make when they when they take their last breaths'.
"Then I went in and I couldn't hear any breathing at all."
A paramedic was then able to get down into the Nutty Putty Cave and take John's pulse on his leg and confirmed the man had died.
Brandon said that after more than 20 hours of John being trapped the man was 'completely unconscious' and wasn't able to share a final word with him, but he could put a radio near John's body so his family could say goodbye.
Joe Harker