A man died at Salt Lake City Airport on Monday night after crawling inside the jet engine of a Delta plane, authorities said.
Kyler Efinger, 30, of Park City, Utah, was identified by police as the deceased. The incident began at 9:54 p.m. when Efinger “breached an airport security door” and “ran to the south end of the airport’s west runway where deicing operations were underway and crawled into an aircraft engine that was not running,” the airport said in a statement.
The Salt Lake City Police Department said Efinger had a boarding pass for a flight to Denver. Officers were called to the scene when a store manager at the airport “reported a disturbance involving a passenger on the secured side of the terminal,” the department said in a news release, adding that the nature of the disturbance remains under investigation.
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Airport Control informed the responding officers that a man had gone through an emergency exit door inside the terminal to the outdoor ramp area. Police then searched for Efinger, with airport staff passing along a report that a pilot had spotted him. Officers also found personal items “including clothing and shoes” on one of the airport’s runways.
After about 10 minutes of the manhunt, dispatchers told police that Efinger was at one of the airport’s deicing pads. Police say that he’d gone “underneath an aircraft and had accessed the engines,” prompting officers to tell air traffic controllers to notify the pilot to shut down the plane’s engines.
Arriving at the aircraft, officers found Efinger unconscious and “partially inside a wing-mounted engine.” “The aircraft’s engines were rotating,” police said, adding that the “specific stage of engine operation remains under investigation.”
Police and Airport Operations then pulled Efinger “from the engine’s intake cowling, secured the scene, began lifesaving efforts, and requested emergency medical services,” according to the news release. The lifesaving efforts included CPR and the administering of the anti-opioid drug naloxone, police said.
Efinger died at the scene, authorities said. “SLCPD officers will work with the medical examiner’s office to confirm the cause and manner of death, which may include a toxicology report,” the release added.
Delta Air Lines flight 2348, which was due to fly to San Francisco, returned to the gate, according to CNN. All 95 passengers got off the aircraft—an Airbus A220—and the flight was ultimately canceled.
Judd Efinger, Kyler’s father, told KSTU that his son was flying to visit a sick grandparent in Denver before the incident. He said that Kyler had been doing well during the family’s Christmas gathering a week ago, but that Kyler had struggled with mental health issues for almost a decade.
