While off-roading in their utility terrain vehicle on Saturday night, a father and son discovered a man’s body on a remote road near a landfill in Fairfield, along Allen’s Ranch Road.
The deceased man was Benjamin David Jansen, a 50-year-old man from Lehi, who had gone on a motorcycle ride Saturday morning and never returned home, according to Sgt. Spencer Cannon, spokesperson for the Utah County Sheriff’s Office.
Cannon said Jansen had been expected home by noon. The accident likely took place between about 11 a.m. and 11:30 a.m., Cannon said.
Jansen had been traveling on an unpaved road with soft, powderlike dirt. While motorcycle wheels usually leave one track (the back wheel tracks the front wheel), officers found two tracks on a turn, in deep dirt, and the motorcycle leaning over.
Cannon believes Jansen may have stopped suddenly and was thrown off the bike.
“It didn’t appear to be a high-speed event,” Cannon said.
Whether Jansen was injured in the accident or had a medical event is unknown, but the man managed to walk a half-mile before collapsing facedown on the road.
“It was unusual,” Cannon said. “It’s not an area where you would be walking. It’s not an area at all where somebody would just be out hiking. It might be an area, obviously, where somebody would just pass by on a motorized vehicle … but not very often at all. And it did appear that he was likely to have been there for an extended period of time, maybe most of the day.”
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