A 30-year-old man from the United States was found dead inside an airplane engine on Monday night at Salt Lake City International Airport, the Associated Press reported.
Kyler Efinger, of Park City, was found unconscious inside an engine mounted to the wing of a commercial aircraft loaded with passengers.
According to the police, Efinger breached an emergency exit door, walked onto the tarmac and climbed inside the engine. The plane had been sitting on a de-icing pad, and its engines were rotating.
Efinger was carrying a ticket and a boarding pass to Denver, the police said. His cause of death remains unclear, according to The Guardian.
The manager of a store inside the airport had reported a disturbance just before 10 pm. He told dispatchers with the Airport Control Center that he saw a passenger pass through an emergency exit.
As the search for Efinger began, officers found clothing, shoes and other personal items on one of the runways.
After locating him, the officers told air traffic controllers to notify the pilot to shut down the aircraft’s engines.
Efinger was pulled out of the engine intake cowling, which directs airflow to the engine fan. Life-saving measures, such as CPR, were performed, but he was pronounced dead at the scene.
The police said that passengers were removed from the plane when Efinger was found, but overall airport operations were not interrupted. The initial investigation indicates the man accessed the airport’s ramp area from the emergency exit and climbed inside the nearby engine.
On Tuesday, Efinger’s father, Judd Efinger, told FOX 13 that his son struggled with mental health for nearly a decade.
He said that Kyler was doing well last week when the family met for Christmas and that he was flying to visit his sick grandparents. He added that he wonders if his son had a mental health episode.
