BYU student vanishes in China

PROVO — Brigham Young University student David Sneddon disappeared somewhere in China last month and is now the subject of search efforts by family members and Chinese and American officials.

The last person known to have seen Sneddon is an innkeeper near Tiger Leaping Gorge, a famed but remote and dangerous area in western China. Sneddon reportedly left some of his belongings with the innkeeper on Aug. 10 so he could travel light.

But Sneddon, 24, who is from Providence, Cache County, never came back for his things, missed flights to Korea and the United States and hasn't returned to BYU, where he is enrolled but absent from fall classes.

His family expressed gratitude for the help of the Chinese government, which has organized a 200-person search party.

"Every night, the U.S. Embassy has been updating our family," said Jennifer Sneddon, David's sister-in-law. "That's been very helpful. They tell us what is going on, what they're planning to do and what they've found, which so far isn't very much. The last one told us the Chinese have 200 police officers on the ground searching."

Gruesomely, she said, the search party found two dead bodies, but neither was Sneddon.

Sneddon's father, Roy, and two brothers — Sneddon is one of 11 children — flew to China this week to join the effort.

The last American to see Sneddon was George Bailey, his traveling companion and roommate in Beijing. The two Chinese language majors roomed together last year in the China House — BYU's on-campus Chinese language residence.

For a month this summer, they were together in a Beijing apartment, where Sneddon began taking Chinese courses at a local university in April and Bailey was working on his language skills.

"It's a difficult thing because I don't know how to respond," Bailey said in an interview with the Deseret Morning News. "I don't know what's happening with David. I don't know if he's dead or alive.

"It's very strange for me to know I'm the last of his acquaintances to see him."

Bailey said Sneddon wanted to tour the country before returning home and persuaded Bailey to go part of the way with him. Sneddon last accessed his bank account on Aug. 2, and the pair arrived by train in the southern Chinese village of Yangshuo, where they biked and did some sightseeing, then parted ways on Aug. 9.

Bailey returned to Beijing while Sneddon headed farther west, to Tiger Leaping Gorge near Lijiang in the Yunnan Province.