Police think last runaways may have left the area

Paul Foy

Tuesday, Dec. 7, 1999 | 11:55 a.m.

CEDAR CITY, Utah - Police in southern Utah said today two remaining runaways from a camp for troubled teens apparently have left the desert, but they would not say where the boys are believed to be.

The Iron County Sheriff's Department said one of the boys contacted a friend and asked him to wire money.

Police said the search has shifted out of the desert but would not say where they now are looking.

A group of eight teen-age campers on a long survival outing allegedly beat their counselor Saturday, bound him with duct tape, tied up another counselor and fled into the Utah desert with blankets and food.

Six of the boys were caught in the following days.

The captured boys, tired, cold and hungry, were at a juvenile detention center here facing felony assault charges.

"They just didn't want to be out camping," said Stock, an instructor for RedCliff Ascent Inc., which takes troubled teens sent by their parents or courts to the mile-high desert of southwest Utah for 60 days at a stretch.

"They had it figured out," he said.

One teen-ager trudged 30 miles across a vast dry basin before surrendering at a hog farm. Another was found 140 miles away at a Holiday Inn cafe in Ely, Nev., after hitching a ride with a U.S. Postal Service trucker. He produced a hand-drawn map that directed authorities to three other boys hiding near Modena, Utah, seven miles from the Nevada border.

Another boy in the group of 14- to 17-year-olds had turned himself in Saturday after he became ill and was abandoned by the others.

The boys had split up during their escape, making it harder for authorities to round them up. Wearing heavy wool and fleece clothing, the boys took blankets, a two-way radio, medical supplies and two sacks of food containing lentils, rice, oats, wheat flour, dried beans, bouillon cubes and dried chili.

But they left in a hurry, leaving behind their rucksacks and sleeping bags and surviving nights as cold as 3 degrees. They had a week's worth of food that could be rationed for as long as a month, Stock said, and several quarts of water.

"We've had kids run before, but they didn't do it this way," he said.

It was at least the third time this year boys had escaped from the program. But never before had an entire group turned on the staff or resorted to violence, said Benson and field instructors for RedCliff Ascent.

Steve Peterson, cofounder of RedCliff Ascent, said he was taking panicky calls from the parents who had paid $15,500 to send their boys on the wilderness outing, which mixes teamwork and "a lot of psychology."

At first, the participants are given just a "blanket pack" of minimal supplies and taught to make shelter, build fires, find water and snare animals.

The boys also were given insulated boots, leaving a distinctive print for trackers from RedCliff Ascent who help narrowed today's search area.

"We're absolutely worried about them," Benson said. "They've done some stupid things, but they're just kids."

Benson said all eight boys would be charged with felony assault, simple assault and theft for taking the radio, which they have not used to respond to calls.

The boys, whose names were not released, came from Silverton, Ore.; Plainfield, Ill.; Austin, Texas; Wynnewood, Pa.; Kildeer, Ill.; and Greenwich, Conn., and two unspecified towns in California and New York, according to Utah officials.

Benson said the boy who was picked up in Ely, Nev., had been sent on a mission to find a vehicle to steal for his group of four. But with no vehicles around, the boy found his way to Ely by hitchhiking with a trucker who became suspicious and turned him into police.

"When a kid runs, particularly when the weather is nice, it can turn into an epidemic. But there's no pattern," Peterson said. "Usually I hear from a parent saying their kid just called from a McDonald's."