Canadian police believe that two men found dead may have fallen into a quarry while fleeing from a taxi driver they had cheated out of a fare.

	Mark Robert Kraynak

But the mother of one of them -- Mark Kraynak of Uniontown -- said she doesn't believe it, and that her son was running from a threat of some kind.

The men were found to have fallen 50 feet onto a ledge in a quarry in Laval, Quebec, near Montreal. Police told Canadian news agencies that the pair may have gone over the edge in the dark while fleeing a cab driver they hadn't paid.

	Steve Wright

"I just don't think my son would do that," said Janice Kraynak, of Millville, N.J. "He was raised to pay his own way."

Mr. Kraynak, 23, and Steve Wright, 20, of California, were missing from Aug. 22 until they were found in the quarry on Sept. 1.

The new police theory comes from a surveillance tape taken outside of a rave club in Laval.

The Gazette of Montreal quoted Laval police Constable Guy Lajeunesse as saying the case no longer appears to be a homicide.

Mr. Wright's mother, Cheryl Crockett, who was visiting the site this weekend, said she could see how the accident happened. Although there is a fence bordering the quarry, in the dark they wouldn't have seen the sharp drop-off; the warning signs were in French.

Ms. Kraynak said yesterday she had seen the videotape, and that it shows two cabs pull up in front of the club and one van. Then her son is seen running toward the intersection near the club followed by Wright. The two men then turn and run up a service road. A cab backs down from the club toward the intersection, then drives up the service road. She said after four or five minutes the cab is seen again, backing down the service road into the intersection. It starts to turn toward the club then changes direction and drives away.

"It's very bizarre," she said.

Ms. Kraynak said she believes the story of her son's death involves much more than cab fare: there was money in his pocket; he had money in the bank; an automatic teller card and credit cards.

"I have reason to believe my son was being threatened at the time," she said. "To me, he was running for his life. That's what it looks like to me."

Police are still looking for the cab driver for questioning.

This fall Mr. Kraynak, an Iraq war veteran, was to start his sophomore year as a business major at Penn State University.

His mother said he was hired by a modeling agency and thought he was going to Canada for a photo shoot. When he found out he was sent there to be a stripper at a gay club, he refused.