Back home at 21, he got married and landed a spot on the Utah Jazz Stunt Team. ![]() But he dropped out after a year to serve a Mormon mission in Buenos Aires. ![]() A theatrical streak led him to join his high school’s cheerleading squad senior year, and he wound up with a cheerleading scholarship to the University of Utah. Wright, 32, a mixed martial arts enthusiast with long blonde hair and piercing blue eyes, grew up in California before moving to Utah at 16. But like gold miners throughout history, a mixture of delusion, pioneering instinct, and financial desperation drove them to it. Wright and Lomu had never imagined they would end up mining for gold in Ghana. “That’s the last we’re going to see of Ghana.” Now, it seemed, Ghana was taking its revenge.Īs the coastline faded in the distance, Wright leaned across the aisle. premiere in October 2012, they had become the face of Ghana’s foreign mining community, which many blamed for destroying the country’s environment and harming its people. But its neocolonial echoes had caused Ghanaians at home and abroad to accuse Wright and Lomu of exploiting Africa for their personal gain. The show’s first season had been a hit, airing on Friday nights behind Gold Rush, Discovery Channel’s highest-rated show. The next morning, they passed through customs and boarded a privately chartered jet bound for Paris.Īt the time, Wright and Lomu - brawny, clean-living Mormons from Utah - were in the midst of shooting Jungle Gold’s second season. As a nationwide manhunt ensued, Discovery ordered Wright, Lomu, and the show’s 20-person British film crew to evacuate Domenase and head to the airport in the capital city of Accra. But where? Wright and Lomu considered escaping into the jungle, but Discovery made the final decision. “The two Americans will be tracked down and arrested,” a Ghanaian official declared. Now, as he scanned his iPhone, Wright saw that he and his co-star, Scott Lomu, were also facing government accusations of illegal gold mining. The day before, he and the entire cast and crew of the Discovery Channel reality show Jungle Gold had fled a nearby village fearing an armed militia was after them. On the morning of May 10, 2013, George Wright woke up in the small Ghanaian town of Domenase to learn that the country’s largest media outlet was accusing him of murder.
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