A man who ventured out to the Sierra National Forest for a vigilante investigation he hoped would disprove official conclusions about the mysterious deaths of a family of hikers himself needed to be rescued after getting lost, authorities said. The Mariposa County Sheriff’s Office said the tourist from Michigan traveled to California in June to investigate the deaths of a young family on the Savage Lundy trail. Last August, Ellen Chung, 31, Jonathan Garrish, 45, their 1-year-old daughter, Miju, and their dog, Oski, were all concluded to have died from overheating and likely dehydration on the trail in soaring triple-digit temperatures. The unnamed Michigan man set out to investigate the case for himself last month. A worried hiker who’d spoken to him before he began his search noticed that his car was still at the trailhead the next morning and raised the alarm. It’s unclear how long he was missing for. “To have someone purposely put themselves in danger, using vital resources and potentially putting the safety of our staff in danger, all to try and prove us wrong is maddening, and quite frankly, sickening,” Mariposa County Sheriff Jeremy Briese said in a statement.
