The story: She was stranded in Zion National Park, one of the most-visited parks, for 12 days without food or water. She’s an experienced hiker, knows Zion well, and is capable of surviving in the park’s rugged conditions, according to her family, but hit her head against a tree she tied her hammock to, became disoriented, and “so weak she was unable to take more than a step or two without collapsing,” according to her sister. “This prevented her from being able to seek out help.” After being missing for 12 days, and the subject of a massive search, the hammock was spotted by a young boy with his mother, and rangers found Courtier “in a thickly vegetated area” about half a mile from where she entered the park. A park spokeswoman said, “She was able to leave of her own capability with minimal assistance.” Her family, not an ambulance, took her to a hospital. (Read story here and here.)
Shaking your head yet?
“A Utah sheriff’s sergeant has cast doubt on the story of a Zion hiker who claims to have survived for 12 days with no food and water after getting lost, and whose family has raised $12,000 for her on a GoFundMe account,” Daily Mail reported on Wednesday, October 21, 2020. Meanwhile, “They have continued to ask for donations … for medical bills, but they have not specified what her injuries are.”
“Sgt. Darrell Cashin from the Washington County Sheriff’s Search and Rescue said parts of Courtier’s story do not ‘add up’ and that there are discrepancies to it. He said she couldn’t have survived by drinking the [toxic] water from the river where she was because it would have killed her, that she had no head injury like her family claimed, that she would have heard people calling her name …. She left California, he said, on a bus in the middle of the night without telling anyone where she was going. … She was found half-a-mile from where she was first seen in the park …. Cashin said it’s therefore unlikely no one found her or that she didn’t hear them as search parties looked for her ….
“‘She’s in that main part of the canyon, which always has thousands of people walking up and down those trails. I’m sure people walked by yelling for her.’ He also said she did not have a head injury that would have been consistent with her hitting it on a tree, as her daughter claimed she did. ‘If we had found somebody in that condition with that kind of severe head injury, we would have at minimum called for a transport agency to check her out … that … tells me … they did not find any significant injury to her …. Physically, she seemed to be in a condition that did not warrant an ambulance and they felt … comfortable to release her to her family …,’ he said. … Holly herself has not been seen or heard from since she was found.”
(Read that story here.)
The deputy sheriff is right, there’s a lot here that doesn’t add up, but one thing that does is: The money they’re collecting through GoFundMe. See my original post here.
Update (10/21/20): “The Washington County Sheriff’s office has opened an investigation … in response to numerous tips ‘indicating the incident was possibly conceived and carried out as part of a plan to fraudulently generate money to a GoFundMe account for Courtier’s recovery,'” Crime Online reported. Read that story here.