Viral video of man toppling rock in state park catches attention of disability claim defendant
It hasn’t been a good month for Glenn Taylor.
First the Boy Scout leader from Utah was featured, along with another leader, toppling an ancient boulder in a state park in a video they themselves posted that went viral. Taylor told the Los Angeles Times the two men took action out of concern that the rock might fall and harm someone. However, a criminal probe was launched by the state parks director.
Meanwhile, the Boy Scouts investigated internally and have stripped the two of their leadership posts, contending that they violated a bedrock “leave no trace” organization rule about camping, the Salt Lake Tribune reports. The men told Fox 13 that they have received death threats over the incident.
Now it turns out that a defendant in an auto accident lawsuit filed by Taylor last month was among the viewers of a YouTube video of the rock incident that has been watched more than 4 million times. The YouTube video has now been removed from its original site, but parts of it can be seen in the CNN video on the left.
Taylor, who says in the suit that he suffered impairment and disability as a result of the 2009 crash, “doesn’t look like a terribly disabled person to me” in the video, defendant Alan MacDonald tells KUTV.
“He’s climbing over other rocks,” MacDonald says of Taylor, “then he lines up, gets leverage and pushes that big old rock several times before he finally pushes it over. Then he turns and twists and high-fives and yucks it up and flexes his muscles.”
Taylor told CBS News that the video doesn’t make clear the force of the push that toppled the boulder, which he apparently is saying was minimal.
ABC News, NBC News and KTVX stories provide additional details.
See also:
CNN: “Created over millennia, destroyed in seconds”
Salt Lake Tribune: “‘Goblin’ topplers say they are receiving death threats”
Updated at 6 p.m. to include subsequent Salt Lake Tribune coverage, then on Oct. 24 to add the Fox 13 link and the CNN video.
