Avalanche claims snowmobiler
A man died after being caught in an avalanche Saturday while snowmobiling near Tower Mountain in the Wasatch-Cache National Forest, authorities said.
The man was with at least three people but was the only one caught in the slide, according to the Wasatch County Sheriff’s Office.
His friends dug through the snow looking for him, first finding his snowmobile and then his body. They administered CPR and called for help, police said.
The man was flown to the University of Utah Hospital, where he later died, police said.
Authorities have not released his identity.
SAN FRANCISCO
Man arrested for attack on Wiesel
A man accused of roughing up Nobel laureate and Holocaust scholar Elie Wiesel at a San Francisco hotel earlier this month was arrested Saturday, authorities said.
Montgomery Township police arrested Eric Hunt, 22, of Sussex County, N.J. He faces charges that include attempted kidnapping, false imprisonment, elder abuse, stalking, battery and the commission of a hate crime, according to San Francisco police.
He was being held without bail in the Somerset County Jail in New Jersey, awaiting extradition to San Francisco.
Wiesel, 78, was a featured speaker at a Feb. 1 peace forum at the Argent Hotel in San Francisco. He was approached in the lobby by a white man in his 20s who asked for an interview, police said.
Authorities said Wiesel agreed to talk in the lobby, but the man insisted the interview be conducted in a hotel room, and got into the elevator with Wiesel. Once on the sixth floor, the suspect dragged Wiesel from the elevator, police said.
Wiesel began yelling, and the suspect ran away down the elevator, police said.
Police have said they were aware that a man claimed responsibility for the attack in a posting on an anti-Semitic Web site registered in Australia. Police have not commented further on the case.
DALLAS
Sale of Oswald’s sniper perch fails
The auction of a window advertised as Lee Harvey Oswald’s sniper perch in the killing of President John F. Kennedy brought a bid of about $3 million, but the sale quickly fell through.
The window was up for auction Friday on eBay with a starting price of $100,000, and bidding quickly rose to seven figures. But 32 bids were either retracted by the bidders – normally because a wrong price had been entered, including one for $17 million – or canceled by the seller because a bidder didn’t meet qualifications.
Then, it turned out that the winning bidder “didn’t have the cash,” said Fred McLane, a business representative for owner Caruth Byrd. “This guy slipped into the bidding in the last minute,” he told the Dallas Morning News.