Jackson Hole News

Koberna Drowning "Accidental"

No Crime in Man’s Odd Death

By Gil Brady, 7-20-07

"Jonathan Koberna, age 23" courtesy of The Koberna family

JACKSON, Wyo. – Sheriff’s investigators have closed the tricky case of a 24-year-old man found dead here in a cold creek over two miles downstream after a security camera captured him leaving a local saloon alone and intoxicated well past midnight last May.

During a convoluted two-month-long investigation--where officials initially suspected foul play and released incriminating information they later recanted--Jonathan Koberna’s death May 23 has now been ruled an accidental drowning “after hypothermia and paradoxical undressing,” Det.-Sgt. Slade Ross of the Teton County Sheriff’s Office said Friday.

On May 24, a guest at the Wagon Wheel motel, near the saloon Koberna was last seen drinking heavily with friends and leaving, stumbling but alive, found the Utah native’s cell phone, wallet, keys and still-tied shoes side by side, pointing toward the water. The personal items lay near a bench some 2.2 miles upstream from where Koberna’s body was found at about 1 p.m. by a man walking his dog along the Russ Garaman trail the previous day.

Ross said Koberna’s unzipped jacket was also found partially afloat in still waters near his shoes and cell phone on the grassy bank after probably getting “caught in an eddy”.

The lead detective said keys in the pocket anchored the jacket to the creek’s bottom, preventing it from being whisked downstream in the high and swiftly moving 50-degree currents on the night Koberna died.

After slamming shots with friends, spilling drinks and “catching pretzels in their mouths,” according to one saloonkeeper, Ross said an outdoor security camera showed Koberna stumbling outside, his jacket unzipped, toward a next door diner where he vanished from view unmolested at about 1:13 a.m.

The security camera recorded no cars entering the Wagon Wheel parking lot until 4:30 a.m., nearly three and half hours later, Ross said.

Koberna is believed to have walked the roughly 175 to 200 yard wood, asphalt, gravel, and grass path to a bench on the east bank of Flat Creek behind the motel where he once worked. Once there, investigators believe Koberna lay on his side for a time as temperatures dipped below freezing.

Officials have said the soles of his shoes were found “clean”.

For more, click here and read my full story only in today’s Casper Star-Tribune

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