After 4 local underwater searches, Ogden man’s disappearance remains a mystery
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- The Ogden Police Department and volunteers from Adventures With Purpose and the Diesel Brothers conducted search and recovery operations this week in Pineview Reservoir and other bodies of water to look for Shane String, 48, of Ogden, who has been missing since November 2021.
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- Photos of Shane Strong, who was reported missing in Ogden in November 2021.
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- Ogden police and volunteers meet to plan the search for Shane Strong, 48, of Ogden, who disappeared in November 2021.
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- An emblem on equipment used by Adventures with Purpose.
OGDEN — Volunteer dive teams with high-end sonar gear probed the depths of four Northern Utah bodies of water this week in hopes of finding clues about the disappearance of an Ogden man last November.
Ogden police and members of the group Adventures With Purpose first converged on Pineview Reservoir, deploying sonar and dive teams, to look for the distinctive orange 1977 Chevrolet Impala driven by Shane Strong, 48.
Lt. Tyler Ziegler said Thursday that Adventures with Purpose contacted Ogden officers after the group, which travels the country helping to look for missing people and vehicles in lakes, reservoirs and ponds, were alerted to Strong’s case by some of their YouTube followers.
Divers found two vehicles deep in Pineview, but not Strong’s car. Heavy equipment supplied by the Diesel Brothers of Woods Cross pulled the lost vehicles out of the murk. “Talk about crazy recoveries from 40 feet deep and up 100-foot cliffs,” Doug Bishop, an Adventures With Purpose member, said on his Facebook page.
“Even though we were unable to locate Shane, we now know where he is not,” Bishop said, adding that the recovery of the two vehicles “is a huge win for the marine environment at Pineview.”
Adventures With Purpose provides its services for free, paying for their gear and other necessities with donations from their YouTube viewers. The groups film documentaries about their work and say they have solved 24 missing-person cold cases since 2019.
Ziegler said that after Pineview, the search moved to Causey Reservoir, the 21st Street Pond in Ogden and then Willard Bay. No vehicles or missing-person evidence was found, but Ziegler said, “A side benefit is that we also know that nobody else’s vehicles are in those waters.”
Strong’s family and police have no clues to the Ogden man’s disappearance. Family members had not heard from him and they reported his disappearance to police. “It’s a weird deal because he was not the type of guy who wouldn’t regularly reach out to his mom and his kids,” Ziegler said. There have been no police contacts and no sightings of Strong and there’s been no sign of the Impala, either.
“We still hope he’s out there,” Ziegler said.
The Ogden officer praised Adventures with Purpose and the Diesel Brothers for their diligence on the reservoir searches. “They were both fantastic,” he said. “They were very understanding of what our processes are. They were very professional and worked extremely hard for three days. To me, they had a genuine desire to find answers for Shane’s family.”
Ziegler said police welcome collaborations with groups that have equipment and skills that the local agencies don’t have access to.
Bishop, in turn, lauded Ogden police, the Diesel Brothers and others that helped in the operation: the Weber County Sheriff’s Office, the Utah Department of Natural Resources, the U.S. Forest Service and the Ogden-based Profiling Evil crime-solving group.
Meanwhile, at the sheriff’s office, Lt. Colby Ryan said Thursday another high-profile missing-person case remains open: the Sept. 8, 2020, disappearance of Shelby Campbell, 29, of Roy.
Campbell was known to take solo hikes in the area and her car was found at a trailhead on the North Ogden Divide. Massive searches over the next few weeks failed to find her.
“We’ve been up there a few times since but haven’t found any evidence to locate her or locate her body,” Ryan said.