A 21-year-old rancher with a history of running away vanished last month while walking to her new job in an “extremely rural” part of Utah.

Elizibeth “Lizzy” Green was reported missing April 17 after she failed to show up to her shift at the ranch in the remote community of Callao, the Juab County Sheriff’s Office said.

“I’m kind of at the point where I think maybe she had somebody pick her up,” Vanessa Simmons, Green’s mother, told 2KUTV Monday.

“I just don’t know who that is, or if they actually picked her up, or if they didn’t come and then she went trying to walk through the desert.”

According to a search warrant, Green had a history of mental health issues and had run away from home in the past, but this instance proved much more distressing.

Green typically maintained an open line of communication with her family when she ran away, and usually returned within a day or so, those close to the young woman told cops.

This time, however, her phone and social media accounts have gone silent, and all attempts to ping her devices have turned up fruitless, the warrant states.

The sheer remoteness of the Callao community has also raised alarm bells for investigators.

Callao, originally part of the Pony Express, is located in northern Snake Valley. Less than 12,000 people populate the entirety of Juab County, according to the Census Bureau.

“This area of our county is approximately three hours away from any major cities and requires travel on dirty roads,” the warrant states.

Deputies descended on the unnamed ranch just one day after Green vanished but found no trace of the young woman.

The ranch owner told authorities she never arrived for her shift and that he hadn’t had any contact with his new employee.

Search and rescue teams also combed the walking route Green would have taken to her job, as well as the surrounding area, but were “unable to locate Elizibeth or anything to determine where she could have gone,” according to the warrant.

“Based on the information that we have received, we are concerned about the possibility that Elizibeth is in danger of serious bodily injury or death,” the warrant states.

“It is unknown if Elizibeth is in danger and lost in the vast desert, or if someone that she was communicating with met with her and is holding her against her will.”

Green was last seen wearing a pink tie-dye high-cut hoodie, a light blue pair of jeans and black Converse sneakers, according to a missing person poster. She was also carrying a white backpack purse.

She stands at 5’11,” has brown hair and “green or hazel eyes depending on what she is wearing,” her mother said.

PROVO, Utah (KSL.com) — A 4th District judge on Monday ordered Kent Cody Barlow, a man charged with causing the deaths of two Eagle Mountain toddlers, to stand trial for two counts of murder.

Two 3-year-old boys, Odin Jeffrey Ratliff and Hunter Charlie Jackson, were playing a horse corral and were killed when a car left the road and veered into Cedar Valley Stables on May 2, 2022.

RELATED | Judge orders Utah man to stand trial in crash that killed 2 boys playing in corral

Judge Robert Lund ordered Barlow to stand trial for two counts of depraved indifference murder, a first-degree felony, and one count of possession of a controlled substance, a class A misdemeanor. Lund said during a hearing on Friday that because of the significance of the case, he would issue a written rather than oral decision.

Barlow, 28, was initially charged with two counts of manslaughter rather than murder and was ordered to stand trial on those charges on July 28, 2022, by Lund. Several months later on March 13, 2023, prosecutors amended the charges, enhancing manslaughter to murder, a first-degree felony.

RELATED | Utah man charged with hitting, killing 2 boys playing in corral; prosecutor says no plea bargains

‘Depraved indifference’

Before deciding whether there was sufficient evidence to order Barlow to stand trial on the upgraded charges, Lund listened to evidence during four days throughout February and March. He also reviewed written arguments and listened to attorneys during a hearing on Friday.

Deputy Utah County attorney Ryan McBride argued Barlow’s actions meet the requirements for “depraved indifference murder.”

Benjamin Aldana, Barlow’s attorney, said the law for depraved indifference requires an action to be “specifically directed” at the person who is killed, and Barlow wasn’t aware of the toddlers. He said if someone had been visible, or if there was a home there instead of stables, maybe the depraved indifference statute would apply.

“That statute doesn’t apply here,” he said.

Lund’s decision says at 7:16 p.m. on May 2, 2022, Barlow lost control of his car and crashed it into Cedar Valley Stables. Lund says there were “at least 20 people” at the facility, mostly children learning to ride horses, and the facility is visible from several miles away.

“The single-car accident created a large debris field. Before colliding with the covered horse stalls, the car passed through multiple layers of fencing. … The car hit the structure with such force that it tore all the supporting beams out of the ground. With no support, the roof on the structure collapsed,” the order said.

It said the stable’s roof collapse killed both boys.

Three others who were in the car with Barlow testified that he was driving at a high rate of speed and ran a stop sign.

“All of them told (Barlow) multiple times to slow down. (He) ignored their pleas,” the order says.

It said GPS data from one of the passengers’ phones shows Barlow accelerated to 123 mph immediately before the crash and left the road traveling at 117 mph — the speed limit is 45 mph.

“(Barlow) took no precautions to minimize the risks that his driving posed to other people. To the contrary, his failure to heed the demands of his passengers to slow down and obey traffic laws together with his ingestion of a powerful mind-altering drug exacerbated the risks his behavior posed to others,” the order says.

It said a blood draw at the hospital showed Barlow had consumed “a large amount of methamphetamine” at some point before the crash.

Shortly before the crash, Barlow had been doing doughnuts in a field next to a baseball practice, a coach testified, and caused concern that he might hit someone. Other drivers also reported seeing a car move very quickly.

Lund’s order said Barlow “created a highly likely probability” of death.

The law for depraved indifference murder was modified two days after the crash that killed the two toddlers, changing the definition from causing “the death of another” to causing “the death of the other individual.”

Aldana has claimed this change created a new defense, but Lund said he finds the earlier version of the statute applies because the amendment was not made retroactive to incidents that happened before the law was changed.

Motion to disqualify Lund

On Sunday, ahead of the decision to order Barlow to stand trial, Aldana filed a motion asking Lund to recuse himself from the case. He said Lund’s insistence on holding the trial for Barlow in September shows he is not impartial, as Aldana contends he may not have enough time to prepare Barlow’s defense.

Lund set the trial in September before knowing whether the trial would be for manslaughter or murder, while the preliminary hearing was scheduled for January, the motion said. The January hearing was delayed to February and March after Aldana tested positive for COVID-19. It wasn’t until Monday that Barlow and his attorney learned whether the trial would be for manslaughter or murder, Aldana said.

When Aldana said Friday that there might not be time to prepare for the trial by September, Lund said he has known about the trial for a while. He told Aldana the trial dates were “firm.”

Aldana’s motion said the case history shows Lund “holds a bias against Mr. Barlow” and his defense team.

“The fact that the court has repeatedly required that a trial setting be in place for this case … says something,” he said.

Aldana said requiring a case to go to trial four months after Barlow was ordered to stand trial will negate his right to a fair trial in the double-murder case.

This is the second time Aldana has made a request for the judge to recuse himself in this case.

West Weber County is the only place Brent Davis, 74, has ever called home. Davis and his brothers are the fourth generation to farm and raise cattle on 60 acres of land in this largely rural corner of northern Utah.

Like so many communities in Utah, the area has seen new homes and development bring more traffic, and change. That change is now set to accelerate — with the Utah Inland Port Authority’s decision on Monday afternoon to approve a new project area on 9,000 acres of mainly agricultural land just down the road from Davis.

Weber County’s hope is that the site will become an “industrial development, advanced manufacturing and renewable energy hub,” Stephanie Russell, economic development director in Weber County, told the UIPA board on Monday.

The project area encompasses farmland and wetlands, and sits between the Harold S. Crane and Ogden Bay Waterfowl Management Areas near the eastern shore of the Great Salt Lake.

Earlier in the day, herons, American avocets, California gulls and ibis flew over and floated in ephemeral pools of water inside the project’s boundaries, as Ben Hart, executive director of the Utah Inland Port Authority, led reporters on a tour. “We’re going to take unprecedented measures to try and protect the wetlands up here,” Hart said.

Opponents say the new project will accelerate industrialization and the loss of agricultural lands, imperil wetlands and impact bird populations.

But port supporters argue it will bring needed jobs in a county where many have to commute to Salt Lake City for work. UIPA board members also say that their involvement in the project will guarantee more protections for wetlands than if landowners developed the site without their incentives. Turning West Weber into a port project will also unlock loans or tax dollars for the costs of new infrastructure, such as a sewer transmission system and wastewater treatment facilities.

To Davis, the port authority’s involvement made one thing clear. “It won’t be country anymore,” he said as he took a break from planting watermelons. “It will be citified.”

Environmental groups started raising alarms about a new port project last August when the proposed site was 903 acres. A few months later, days before the New Year holiday weekend, the port authority and Weber County posted a notice that said they planned to expand the port project to almost 9,000 acres.

During the Monday afternoon meeting, UIPA staffers outlined their plan to mitigate the potential harms to wetlands.

“The inland port recognizes the extent of ecological sensitivity throughout this project area, considering its proximity to the Great Salt Lake, as well as to the Harold Crane and Ogden Bay waterfowl management areas,” Mona Smith, UIPA’s environmental engineer, told the board.

In order for developers to unlock incentives, UIPA said, it will require them to develop an inventory of wetlands and require a 600-foot buffer between waterfowl management areas and construction. It also recommended that 3% of the tax revenue collected from development in the project area go towards wetland mitigation.

Over 25 years, UIPA expects the increased taxes will add up to $343 million, meaning roughly $10.3 million would go towards wetlands protection over that period of time.

“Having these types of arrangements, having a wetlands strategy that is more stringent than what the Army Corp of Engineers will put in place is a benefit, is long term more beneficial to that ecosystem than if we were just to walk away and do nothing,” said Joel Ferry, executive director for the Utah Department of Natural Resources and nonvoting UIPA board member.

Environmental groups remain skeptical.

“Currently the Utah Inland Port Authority (UIPA) is the single biggest driver of wetland destruction and impairment in the Great Salt Lake Basin,” port critics, including Great Salt Lake Audubon and Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment, wrote in a 2023 report.

“There wouldn’t be wetlands destruction without the inland port authority,” Deeda Seed, a staffer with the Center for Biological Diversity, wrote in a text to The Salt Lake Tribune. The project’s wetlands policy is an ineffective gesture to address “legitimate concerns about the harm to 28,000 acres of biological wetlands,” she wrote. The funds set aside for wetlands also are “insufficient and it’s unclear how they will implement it,” Seed wrote.

Without UIPA incentives for infrastructure, Seed and others argue, there wouldn’t be an economic incentive to develop the open lands.

But, responds UIPA director Hart, “there were already viable development plans up here in the area.”

Most of the designated West Weber Inland Port Project will be on land owned by the Marriott family. Another 300 or so acres in the project are owned by “PCC LAND LLC,” which shares the same address as real estate developer the Gardner Group, who purchased the property in 2023.

Although much of the new port project land is currently agricultural open space, it was zoned for industrial use in the 1960s, according to Hart, and Compass Minerals and Western Zirconium have long operated nearby.

“It’s no big surprise to me,” Davis said of the inland port project proposal, “but still, I hate to see it.”

Others felt caught off guard when they learned that the land could become the latest “inland port.”

Residents of Weber County sent county commissioners a letter on April 16 asking them to reevaluate the proposal and pause their plans. “We should not incentivize massive industrial development on the shores of Great Salt Lake, in an area containing some of the last remaining wetlands in northern Utah,” the residents wrote.

UIPA had not reached out to neighbors of the project, Hart told reporters, because the port’s involvement wouldn’t require a zoning change.

“Well,” Davis said after The Tribune informed him that UIPA voted to adopt the inland port. “I figured it would be that way.”