Backcountry
Industry News
A resident of Brighton, Utah, is being charged with aggrevated assault after threatening a snowboarder with a shotgun in February this year. Keith Robert Stebbings, 67, was charged on Thursday March 28, in the Salt Lake City 3rd District Court with aggravated assault, a third-degree felony, as well as making a threat of violence, which is a class B misdemeanor. The charges are being laid by Loren Richardson, who was snowboarding at Brighton Resort when he went into the backcountry and rode near Stebbings’ property. Stebbings confronted Richardson, brandishing a shotgun and threatening to “put holes” in Richardson. The encounter was documented on Richardson’s cellphone and shared on social media.
Richardson asserts there was no signage from where he was riding down, alerting him to the fact he was about to enter private property, and Unified Police Officers confirmed there were no signs in the area of the resort from where Richardson entered Stebbings’ property. There is a sign on the access road from Big Cottonwood Canyon Road towards Stebbings’ property at 7900 Old Prospect Avenue, but not coming from the National Forest Service Land.
Under the threat-of-violence charge, Salt Lake County prosecutors assert that Stebbings threatened to commit bodily injury or death or acted in a way that placed Richardson “in fear of imminent serious bodily injury, substantial bodily injury, or death.” Richardson was not the only person threatened by Stebbings that day but the other person, an unidentified man from Holladay, Utah, who had been taking a backcountry class near Guardsman Pass, elected not to press charges. He however filed a report with the Unified Police Department, alleging he had been hit in the hip by Stebbings’ shotgun.
Brighton Mayor Dan Knoop acknowledged in an interview with local news station KSL News that while skiers and snowboarders shouldn’t be going into that area, it is a frequent occurrence, and that most residents consider it as simply part of living in the backcountry. Residents trying to intimidate backcountry skiers or boarders with a gun is simply unacceptable, “It is never acceptable to be brandishing a gun. There are other ways of getting your point across. If he shoots someone, he’s going to jail.”
No court date has been set as of yet and Stebbings has not been arrested.
