UPDATED: Former state legislator missing and endangered in St. George; public’s help requested
Update Jan. 2, 2017 – Bennion has been found safe.
Read more: Former state legislator missing since New Year’s Eve has been found.
ST. GEORGE — Former state legislator and former Salt Lake County Republican Party Chairman Chad Bennion went for a night run along a trail in St. George Saturday and has not been seen since.
See video in the media player top of this report.
The 52-year-old Bennion of Murray went for a run New Year’s Eve while visiting his family and disappeared. He has not been seen since, St. George Police Lt. Joseph Hartman said.
“When we tried to ping his cell phone it hit a tower on North Bluff,” Hartman said. “But they couldn’t pinpoint it any more accurate than that. It could be within 3, 4, 5 or 10 miles, we don’t know.”
Bennion is described as a white male, about 5 feet 9 inches tall. He was last seen at around 4 p.m. Saturday wearing black running pants and a white T-shirt.
Bennion is known to park his car at trailheads when he goes running. His vehicle has not been located. Bennion drives a black Oldsmobile Bravada SUV.
Description
- Name: Chad Edward Bennion
- Age: 52 years old
- Height: 5 feet 9 inches
- Weight: 170 lbs
- Complexion: Fair
- Build Average/medium
- Hair color: Brown
- Eye color: Blue
- Vehicle: Black 2002 Oldsmobile Bravada
- License plate: Utah X413GX
Anyone who happens to see his vehicle or has any information on the location of Bennion is asked to call St. George Police via the St. George Communications Center dispatch at 435-627-4300 or call 911 with reference incident 16P032570.
Bennion has recently been attending law school in Los Angeles, Washington County commissioner-elect Dean Cox said in an interview.
“He is going to school at the Western State College of Law,” Cox said. “He’s just a super-nice kid. I can’t say nothing but good things about him.”
Update at 8:20 p.m.: search continues by air
“There’s nothing to indicate anything suspicious about the circumstances,” St George Police Capt. Mike Giles said. “Whether he ran into an issue on a trail, hurt himself, got stuck somewhere, we just don’t know.”
“Our goal currently is to find the vehicle and determine what kind of search we need to conduct after that,” Giles said.
Washington County Sheriff’s Office took to the air in search of Bennion’s black SUV until nightfall. Though several black vehicles were spotted, none was confirmed to be Bennion’s, according to a Facebook post by Cox.
Meanwhile, another close friend and associate of Bennion, Carl Downing, took to the air courtesy of Zion Helicopters in order to search several possible areas near Hurricane.
“We searched from five helicopters over to Gold’s Wash around all the Gem trails and up on top to Gooseberry Mesa checked that area and came back around over, all the way across I-15 over a lot of BLM land, and the edge of Snow Canyon,” Downing said.
However, their search turned up no leads.
“The lighting was great,” Downing said. “If there was a vehicle out there, I’m confident we would have found it.”
St. George News reporter Joseph Witham contributed to this report.
Ed. note: Updated at 5 p.m. with new details on Bennion’s description. Updated at 8:20 p.m. with video report, police interviews and information about air search.
Email: rwayman@stgnews.com
Twitter: @STGnews | @NewsWayman
Copyright St. George News, SaintGeorgeUtah.com LLC, 2017, all rights reserved.
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