Ian finished his water, his supply already reduced during the previous night's hike, and began to complain of thirst. Some teens shared their water, and Hale gave him half of her quart at one point. Ian drank it in a gulp.
The group crossed three ridges, one hill after another. Ian labored, at times stumbling. Two teens started urging him along.
"Come on, man, you can do it," one teen told Ian, according to a witness statement taken by the Millard County Sheriff's Office.
But as Ian crested that final hill around 11:30 a.m., after hiking 1.4 miles, all he could see before him was more of the same: up, down, up and down, an undulating landscape of sagebrush, native grasses, broken shale and scattered junipers and pinyon trees. To his right spread the Sevier Desert, empty and browned under the summer sun.
On the ridge, Ian stood still, his body already in the process of shutting down as his blood thickened in the heat and he became delirious. One teen noted Ian didn't seem to know what was going on.
"Come on, man." Ian didn't respond. "You can go down this hill willingly or we can put you down it," his hiking companion said.
Gause, who had reached the crest of the next hill, watched the agitated teens as they spent approximately 20 minutes trying to get Ian moving.
"Come on, man, who dogs it on the downhill?" one frustrated teen asked Ian.
Ian just stood there, dazed and sweating "like a pig."
The teen grabbed him and began pulling him along. Ian finally responded.
"Oh, I can do it," he said.
When Ian didn't move, the boys threatened to drag him to the next camp.
"No, I can do it," Ian said. And then he sat down. The two teens pulled off Ian's 29-pound backpack, and Ian lay against it.
One teen backtracked to Hale, who was about 20 yards away. She called out to him: "Ian, get your pack on and let's go."
When Hale reached Ian, he stood briefly and then sank back down to his pack.
"So do you need a break? Are you tired? What's the problem?" Hale asked Ian. He crossed his arms and stared at her. Hale tried to cajole Ian into moving for about 20 minutes. According to one teen's taped statement, Hale nudged Ian with her foot, shook him and slapped his face to try to rouse him from his stupor. Finally, she pulled out her radio and called Mark Wardle, who was in Delta.
"I can't convince Ian that he needs to continue hiking," she told Wardle. "What should I do?"
[Uh, check his temp? Give him some water? Allow him to rest and cool down?]
Wardle told her to check Ian's consciousness by doing a "hand drop test" -- holding his arm above his face and letting it go to see how he reacted. It flushes out fakers, Hale would say later, because a conscious person will protect the face.
Ian's arm slipped to his side.
"I need to know if there's something wrong," Hale said to Ian. "Respond to me, tell me your name."
"Ian," he said.
Hale called Wardle again. "He seems to be conscious," she reported. "I can't get him to hike. What should I do?"
Wardle, who already had begun driving toward Marjum Pass, told Hale to pour water over Ian and move him into the shade.
Hale beckoned to Gause to come assist her. Ian now lay on the ground, motionless, his eyes open and occasionally making contact although his breathing was "strange," a mixture of a moan and a cry.
The counselors sat Ian up and tried to get him to drink water. It merely dribbled down his face. They poured warm water from their bottles over his head, chest and back.
The noon sun had burned down on the dying teen for more than an hour when Gause grabbed Ian's torso and Hale held his feet and "pulled" him 10 feet to a patch of shade under a pinyon tree.
Still convinced Ian was faking illness, the two counselors split up -- Hale [an EMT] running ahead to check on the rest of the clan and Gause moving 30 to 50 feet away so he could observe Ian from behind another tree.
Gause noticed Ian's moans stopped minutes after Hale left -- proof, he figured, that Ian was acting. Gause waited about 10 minutes and then crept closer to Ian.
As Hale made her way back to the tree, Wardle called for an update.
"How is Ian doing?" Hale yelled over to Gause, who, figuring his cover was blown, hurried to the tree.
Ian had stopped breathing and lacked a pulse.
Sitting alone under the pinyon, Ian August had died.
Sorry, they're all guilty. Mark Wardle included. Two hours passed from the time when Ian could no longer hike and the time rescuers were called. Sitting in the sun, baking to death. There is no reasonable justification for what they did to that child.
