FEATURE — It was a year where the eyes of the world were sometimes focused on St. George and Southern Utah.

Sometimes, it was because some of the biggest sports moments were happening here, whether it was by top triathletes or the youngest baseball players.

In other moments, it was because of a trial over the theft of piglets, an HBO reality show or a blackface incident at a Walmart.

Join St. George News in a look back at some of the year’s biggest and most-read stories.

Top story

The most-read story of 2022 had its pants down.

In late January, during a traffic stop on Old Dixie Highway 91, Washington County Sheriff’s deputies arrested 30-year-old Timothy James Rich, a resident of Salt Lake City. He was found with controlled substances, financial cards that weren’t his, an underage female passenger and no pants.

Authorities say when the suspect exited the vehicle, his pants were unzipped and he was not wearing any underwear. He then quickly closed the vehicle’s door.

Rich reportedly told police that he and the passenger, who was still sitting inside the car, had left Salt Lake City the day before to travel to Mesquite to retrieve his car from an impound lot in Nevada.

Deputies later learned the passenger was a 16-year-old juvenile who was listed in the foster care system, and once the teen’s caseworker was contacted, she was taken to a youth crisis center.

While speaking to deputies, the suspect denied having any knowledge of the cashier’s check or of the cards found in the car, the report states, and he also denied that he had any sexual contact with the teen, despite officers finding him with his pants unzipped when they first approached the car, which he said was because he had urinated outside near the vehicle just before deputies arrived.

Rich pled guilty in late February to two 3rd-degree felonies and received a suspended five-year prison sentence. Beyond fines and community service, the remainder of his sentence to be served was 100 days in jail and three years probation. Court records indicate Rich may have recently violated that probation and a hearing is scheduled next month.

University no longer whistles Dixie

When the school year ended at St. George’s university in May, the signs still said Dixie State. By the time students returned in the fall, the signs from Encampment Mall to the side of Greater Zion Stadium said Utah Tech.

The university officially made its eighth name change in its 111-year history on July 1 as the end point of a two-year process that included local opposition, a survey to determine the new name and the physical work of changing signage, letterhead and websites around campus to the new logos.

Jordon Sharp, vice president of marketing and communication, said the university considered 27 logo designs in total, 22 of which were submitted by students, professors and local designers.

Acknowledging the controversy that surrounded the name change process, Sharp said he’s optimistic that the overall response will be positive and the new branding will be well received by local residents and students.

“This isn’t our first name change, and it’s been difficult every time,” he said. “The brand of a university is more than just a name or a color or a logo: it really is part of who we are. We know that change is difficult … and at the end of the day we’re here for the students, we’re here for the community despite any personal preferences.”

The university has tried to find creative ways to reuse some materials, including sign lettering, and reduce waste in the process, even finding a new home for the “D’s” (repainted blue) at Dixie High School, Sharp said.

St. George becomes center of sporting world

For at least one day on May 7, the biggest sporting event in the world could be found in St. George.

The most important day of the year in endurance sports and triathlons, the Ironman World Championship, was held outside Kona, Hawaii for the first time in 40 years because of COVID-19 restrictions and Southern Utah had a chance to show off its red-hilled beauty to the world.

Some 2,880 athletes competed in Saturday’s championship, which started off with an early morning 2.4-mile swim at Sand Hollow Reservoir, transitioned to a 112-mile bike ride through Hurricane, Washington City, and St. George, and then finished with a marathon 26.2-mile run in and around downtown St. George.

Racers competed in the dry desert climate with enthusiasm as Southern Utah rolled out the red carpet for the first Ironman World Championship staged since 2019.

Although the pro racers were all finished by mid-afternoon, age-group competitors are expected to be crossing the finish line until well after dark. The last three racers were observed moving through Royal Oaks Park shortly before midnight.

Norway’s  Kristian Blummenfelt took the men’s title after taking the lead with 10 miles remaining and never looking back, while Switzerland’s Daniela Ryf took the women’s race more than nine minutes ahead of any other competitor.

Beyond the main Ironman, St. George hosted the half-triathlon Ironman 70.3 World Championship on Oct. 29 for the second-straight year though the race was marred by two competitors having their bikes hit by a vehicle right where two bikers were killed by another motorist in a cycling race two months before.

Little Southern Utahns go big league

The Little League World Series has existed for 75 years, but until 2022, no team from Southern Utah had ever made it to Williamsport.

The all-stars from the Snow Canyon Little League made history in August by becoming the first-ever team from the region to go to the Little League World Series.  After a three-game run, the team made up of 13 young boys and one girl got a heroes welcome back home on Aug. 24.

The sirens of the engines could be heard throughout Santa Clara, announcing that the boys and girl were back in town.

“I can see them,” one fan younger herself than the team for 10- to 12-year-olds yelled as the two fire engines with the members of the all-stars came down Little League Drive. Mother Nature gave her own cheer for the home team, as a faint rainbow appeared behind the approaching trucks.

There were 250-300  people in the parking lot of the Little League complex to greet them, including the mayor and City Council, who delayed their meeting in order to take part in the celebration.

As the players descended from atop the trucks with the help of firefighters, they were warmly greeted not by their parents but with celebratory hugs from friends their own age. The proud parents waited their turn.

One player missing was Easton Oliverson, who was still recovering in a Pennsylvania hospital. Oliverson, whose father Jace was an assistant coach for the team, fell from the top bunk of a dormitory bunk bed overnight a few days before play began, suffering skull, cheekbone and brain injuries that nearly cost him his life. In response, Little League Baseball ended their long practice of using bunk beds for the players at the Series. The young Southern Utah received an outpouring of support, greetings and baseball goodies from Major Leaguers like Mookie Betts and Utah Gov. Spencer Cox.

Oliverson was later transferred to Primary Children’s Hospital in Salt Lake City and returned to St. George on Sept. 19. Since then, his family has filed a lawsuit against Little League Baseball and the maker of the bed that is continuing in a Pennsylvania court and Oliverson, while back on his feet, continues to get medical treatment.

Drag dispute shakes St. George City Hall

A television drag show reality program became the source of debate inside St. George government and among its citizens between what kind of events could be held in Town Square Park and the rights of the city’s LGBTQ community.

Producers of HBO’s “We’re Here” program received a permit from the city to hold and film a drag show on the evening of June 3 in the park. On the night before the show was to take place, the St. George City Council considered pulling the show’s permit. After 12 of the 14 members of the public to speak at the hearing expressed support for the show to go on, it did with nearly 2,000 attending the show in what producers later called the largest crowd ever seen in the series.

But the controversy didn’t end, with some residents saying that children needed to be protected from being exposed to LGBTQ events and seeking stronger measures from the city against such programs taking place in the open. St. George City Manager Adam Lenhard resigned in October, but some reports said he was actually forced out and provided a $625,000 settlement to avoid a lawsuit because of his approving the permit for the show.

The actual episode featuring the June drag show and profiles of local LGBTQ residents premiered on Dec. 9.

The episode shows the three drag queen hosts providing emotional support to local residents and families of different LGBTQ sexual orientations culminating in the residents participating as performers in the Town Square drag show. There is also a segment devoted specifically to the debates in the St. George City Council, with the focal point being Councilwoman Michelle Tanner.

Pride of Southern Utah Executive Director Micah Barrick, who uses the pronoun they and identifies as nonbinary, and their family was one of the local residents profiled and is declared the local “Queermander in Chief” by Bob the Drag Queen.

Barrick, who has also already seen the episode, said it represents Southern Utah’s largest city well for both the support they said they received from supporters at the June show and the council hearings and what they described as a hidden side of hate and fear of being harmed either mentally or physically.

“It kind of shows St. George in that there’s a lot of love here for our community, that there is a lot of support despite all the negative, loud rhetoric around everything else,” Barrick said. “I think they did such an incredible job representing our community and showing the love that we have here. What I felt at the end of that episode was love. They did such a great job in a respectful way of exposing the harmful nature of the rhetoric that certain City Council members are repeating.”

Another visitor record and a tragedy at Zion

A University of Arizona graduate student who had written studies on flood management was swept away by a flash flood on Aug. 19 in Zion National Park and found dead three days later.

Jetal Agnihotri was among multiple hikers who were swept off their feet by a flash flood in The Narrows.

She was also not the only person to lose their life in The Narrows in 2022. In late November, a woman died of hypothermia after conditions became dangerously cold.

The tragedies come as the hub of Utah’s “Mighty Five” parks is seeing another record year of visitation. At the very least, 2022 will be the second-most visited year in the national park’s history after a record 5,039,835 visitors in 2021. By the end of November, the park has seen 4,535,611 visitors this year. The Saturday of Independence Day weekend saw the park’s vehicle gates closed off at 10 a.m. for overcrowding.

Park officials have been looking for ways to deal with the increasing crowding, including starting a reservation program for Angels Landing.

The strain of increased visitation is fraying the edges of Zion National Park. So park personnel are reaching out to the public and leaders to protect this unique and historical treasure.

“As we’ve seen visitation increase, we obviously see more need to step up our game and to deal with some of the issues that come with this visitation,” Zion National Park Superintendent Jeff Bradybaugh said.

“We’re delighted to have visitors come and enjoy our parks and public lands,” Bradybaugh said. “A key component of our mission is to conserve and protect the resource which attracts people and do that in perpetuity.”

FBI raid in Colorado City aimed at FLDS leader 

In a reminder that the troubles of the past are still felt in the Short Creek area, the FBI conducted several raids on Sept. 13 that included the arrest of the leader of an offshoot group of the polygamous Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

Samuel Bateman is accused of orchestrating sexual acts involving minors and giving underage wives as gifts to his male followers.

St. George News has learned at approximately 10:45 a.m., the FBI performed a raid on the home of known local FLDS leader Samuel Bateman. Bateman leads a break-off sect of the FLDS religion in Colorado City.

The raid comes nearly 15 years to the day, on Sept. 25, 2007, that FLDS leader Warren Jeffs was convicted in a St. George court of being an accomplice to rape. That conviction was later overturned, and Jeffs was subsequently convicted of aggravated sexual assault on a minor in Texas, where he remains in prison. Jeffs has continued to lead the FLDS from prison.

According to past media reports, Bateman came out shortly after Warren Jeffs was arrested on Aug. 29, 2006, and claimed he was the one to receive revelation for the FLDS religion. Shortly after, Seth Jeffs claimed he would be revealing revelation from his brother while he has been imprisoned at the Louis C. Powledge Unit, a prison near Palestine, Texas.

Multiple witnesses in Colorado City have confirmed with St. George News that the FBI was at two houses and one other property owned by Bateman.

Pig trial in St. George draws national attention

The trial of two men accused of stealing two piglets from a Smithfield Foods facility in Milford in 2017 had a venue change to St. George and the October trial drew national and international attention.

Beaver County prosecutors said the trial was strictly one of theft and the judge struck down attempts by co-defendants Wayne Hsiung and Paul Picklesimer to bring the condition of the animals into the trial. After deliberating for more than seven hours, an eight-member jury in St. George returned an unanimous verdict of not guilty on all charges.

Picklesimer and Hsiung were admittedly part of a group of five activists who entered the Smithfield Foods facility known as Circle Four Farms in Milford on the night of March 7, 2017. During their self-described “rescue mission,” the group ended up removing two piglets from the site, claiming that both animals were sick and malnourished.

Outside the courthouse Saturday, supporters were seen throughout the day waiting anxiously for the verdict. Their mood on the courthouse steps after the verdict was announced immediately changed to one of exuberance.

As reported in St. George News earlier this week, dozens of people affiliated with the group gathered for protests and demonstrations throughout the week. Many gathered inside the Electric Theater down the street to watch each day’s proceedings live on the court’s WebEx streaming platform. During the week, group members also staged a caravan protest at Circle Four Farms in Milford and held up signs saying “Right to Rescue” and similar slogans along Tabernacle Street in St. George.

Twister near Tonaquint

Tornadoes aren’t something usually seen in this region, but in August there were at least two. In turn, many locally learned what a landspout was.

Landspouts, a type of weaker tornado that forms from the bottom up, rather than from the top down, were seen near Tonaquint Intermediate School on Aug. 11 and Aug. 20 southeast of Littlefield, Arizona.

Weather scientists say there has definitely been a recent increase in tornadic activity locally.

At least statistically, there has been an uptick in tornadoes in the five-county Southern Utah area in the last two decades. According to National Weather Service records, there were four tornadoes in the area between 1950 and 2000. Since 2000, there have been seven. 

At the same time, Southern Utah has also become more populated in that time and radar technology to detect tornadoes has also drastically improved.  

Dan Berc, warning coordination meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s Las Vegas office, said there is not enough data to confirm if tornadoes are happening here more frequently. But he said something more plentiful now, besides population, is the ability to quickly photograph and get video of possible tornadoes through cell phones.  

“A lot of times, these will occur in areas so rural, we never hear about it,” Berc said. “But these days, everyone is a photographer so we see it more often.”

Fatal fall at Utah Tech dorms

Utah tech freshman Peyton Hall was on the fifth-floor balcony of his Campus View Suites II dorm on the morning of Dec. 4, with his roommates and friends nearby. In circumstances deemed accidental at the time, Hall fell from the balcony to his death. 

Two days later, Utah Tech students and Hall’s friends and family gathered on campus for a candlelight vigil.

“After just a few minutes on campus, Peyton said, ‘This is my place.’ And I see a bunch of you nodding your heads. You’ve had that same feeling. This is your place,” Del Beatty, vice president of student affairs, said. “And that’s the most important part, right? That we remember what we wanted.”

Ali Threet, dean of students at Utah Tech, told the crowd at the vigil that when times of tragedy occur, there are two things that happen.

“One, either people move away from each other and they withdraw. Or two, they move closer toward each other, and they become a community and a family,” Threet said. “Lean on each other for support and strength, and kindness.

“Remember the good times with Peyton. Remember the good times with each other,” she added. “Because as Trailblazers, we’re a family. And we come together.”

Five years later, man who started Brian Head fire speaks

In June 2017, the Brian Head Fire burned away 71,000 acres in one ot the worst brush fires in Southern Utah history.

Five years later, the man who inadvertently started the fire spoke publicly about it for the first time, and he gave that story to St. George News / Cedar City News.

On that Friday morning of June 17, Lyman piled some cut branches and sticks onto a level spot on the hillside. He had a running hose waiting as he prepared to ignite the slash pile, just as he’d also done on previous days without incident.

It was late in the morning, just after 11:30, Lyman recalled, but the slash pile was still within the shade of the tall evergreens lining the hillside to the east. The weather was clear, cool and calm, he said, adding that the wind didn’t pick up until later that afternoon.

“When the fire started, it was less windy than it is right now,” he said. “A light breeze, hardly blowing at all. Nothing. There’s no way I would have burned if the wind was blowing.”

Unbeknownst to Lyman, the fire he started wasn’t just burning the pile of branches above the surface of the ground, it was also spreading underground, creeping through what’s known as duff, a thin layer of composting organic material just above the mineral soil.

Black face incident in Cedar City

An incident recorded on Halloween night in a Cedar City Walmart ended up causing a national and international outcry after a video of it went viral on the internet. A group of eight people that appeared to be minors included three wearing “jailbird” costumes and wearing black minstrel makeup considered to be bigoted.

Ultimately, both the Cedar City Police and the Iron County School District closed the case without any kind of criminal charges and also determined the three in blackface didn’t atrtend a local school.

While many social media users, including the person who filmed the video, talked about a hate crime being committed, Iron County Attorney Chad Dotson said the act of wearing blackface is not technically a hate crime.

“I don’t have enough information watching the video to make that judgment, but certainly just dressing like that is not a hate crime. “

By definition, a hate crime has to be an actual crime, such as theft or assault, that can be linked to hatred of the victim’s race, ethnicity, religion or sexual orientation.

A media representative from Walmart’s corporate offices provided a statement saying that the teens were ultimately kicked out of the store.

“After learning these people were in the building, our associates immediately instructed them to leave the property,” the statement read. “We don’t tolerate discrimination or demeaning behavior of any kind and are incredibly disappointed by what is shown in this video.”

No drought in water concerns

The drought continued to be a worry in 2022 with local cities and the Washington County Water Conservancy setting long-term plans to deal with less water supply and more people.

An example of that dwindling supply was the state of Lake Powell, where the water level dropped so much that docks around the lake were forced to close and the intakes to the Glen Canyon Dam were threatened.

“We’re not afraid of decreasing water levels,” Ed Kmetz, owner and mechanic of Bulldog Marine in Page, Arizona, said. “We’re survivors. We’ll get through this.”

To that end, Kmetz is trying to remain flexible and resilient. If the lake should ever dry up, he has a vision of Page becoming Arizona’s version of Moab.

“The terrain will be here long after that lake dries up,” he said.

Watch the skies

Between bright meteors and a rocket launch that blazed across local skies, Southern Utahn eyes looked up at interesting phenomenons in 2022.

Phil Plait, known as “The Bad Astronomer” for his books and media appearances on the Discovery and National Geographic channels, told St. George News it’s not likely any part of the meteoroid ever hit the ground and that it was around the size of one of the basketballs shot up by the Utah Jazz Monday night.

“I personally can’t measure how big the meteoroid was from the videos or the reports, but judging from the brightness it wasn’t too big … less than a meter across for sure. Basketball may be about right,” Plait said. “At that size, it would be rare to get meteorites hitting the ground. Most likely it completely burned up.”

As of Tuesday afternoon, the American Meteor Society had received 125 individual reports from Utah, Arizona, Nevada and California of the meteor sighting on its Fireball Reporting page. The report furthest north was from Nona, Utah, just south of Provo; the furthest south was Tucson, Arizona; and the furthest west was Calabasas, California, in the Los Angeles area where it was reported as having a “green glow” and “lots of flames.”

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