A man was pronounced dead after he was found inside a plane engine at Salt Lake City International Airport on Monday, police said.
The man, identified as 30-year-old Park City, Utah resident Kyler Efinger, was a passenger with a boarding pass bound for Denver, according to a news release from the Salt Lake City Police Department (SLCPD).
SLCPD Airport Division officers responded to the scene at approximately 9:52 p.m. local time after a store manager inside the airport contacted dispatchers with the airport control center.
A store manager reported a “disturbance” involving a passenger — Efinger — on the secured side of the terminal. The nature of the disturbance remains under investigation, police said.
When SLCPD officers responded, they were informed by airport control personnel that the passenger had gone through the emergency exit door. A search for the passenger followed, and it was determined that he approached the airport ramp area from the emergency exit.
During the search, personal items, including clothes and shoes, were found on one of the airport’s runways.
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At approximately 10:08 p.m., dispatchers notified SLCPD officers that a man was under the aircraft and had accessed the engine. FAA air traffic controllers notified the pilot to shut down the plane’s engines.
Officers then located Efinger unconscious inside a wing-mounted engine of an occupied commercial aircraft on a de-icing pad. The aircraft’s engines were turning at the time, but a certain phase of the engine’s operation remains under investigation, according to the press release.
SLCPD officers, along with the Salt Lake City Fire Department and airport operations personnel, removed the man from the engine intake cover and secured the scene. They performed life-saving efforts including CPR and administering naloxone (a drug that rapidly reverses opioid overdoses), but the man died at the scene.
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SLCPD is working with the medical examiner’s office to confirm the cause of death, which it said could include a toxicology report.
The passengers who were on the plane at the time of the incident were safely disembarked, and the incident did not disrupt the overall operations at the airport, according to the press release.
Multiple agencies are currently conducting separate investigations into Monday’s incident, including SLCPD, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) and the Transportation Security Administration (TSA).
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