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Original Message
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Something pissed this guy off.
Shock, Anger Pierce a Hunter´s Paradise
By P.J. Huffstutter and Stephanie Simon Times Staff Writers
BIRCHWOOD, Wis. — Hundreds of people huddled in the dark town square Monday night to memorialize six hunters — their friends and neighbors — killed in an attack so savage few could speak of it.
It was the community´s first chance to gather since a trespasser Sunday emptied his semiautomatic rifle into a group of friends out for a Thanksgiving week deer hunt.
"We have come here tonight with many emotions," said Paul Oman, pastor of the Trinity Lutheran Church. "Shock, certainly. Questions of why. Anger. Resentment. And the need for justice."
Some in the crowd cried. Most stared straight ahead. The pastor sang "Amazing Grace."
Authorities arrested Chai Soua Vang, 36, as he emerged from the woods before dusk Sunday, a short distance from the carnage. He is being held at Sawyer County Jail and has not been charged.
According to local law enforcement officials, Vang had come up from his home in St. Paul, Minn., with at least two friends. He started out hunting on public land but apparently got lost and wandered into a 400-acre tract of private property. After the shooting, he encountered several other hunters who guided him out to the road, where a game warden with the Department of Natural Resources arrested him.
Authorities are still looking for Vang´s friends.
The dead and wounded were from this rural stretch of northwest Wisconsin — a region dotted with small towns and villages like Birchwood. Many had connections to the largest city in the area, Rice Lake, home to 8,400.
The victims — part of a group of a dozen or so who came together each year — included a father and son and several longtime friends. Killed were Robert Crotteau, 42, and his son Joey, 20; Al Laski, 43; Mark Roidt, 28; and Jessica Willers, 27. Dennis Drew, 55, died of his injuries at a hospital Monday night.
"I can´t describe how I feel. How should you feel?" asked Karen Roidt. Her son Mark, she said, was "fun-loving," an avid outdoorsman. He had been hunting since he was 12.
"It´s a senseless act," his mother said.
According to authorities, the party met up Sunday at a cabin in the woods. Pocketing walkie-talkies to communicate, they split up to search the shadows for deer.
Terry Willers, 47, Jessica´s father, came across the intruder first.
The man was perched in a platform in the trees, although the woods were marked no trespassing. Willers asked the man to leave. The man climbed down as two of Willers´ hunting partners arrived. He turned to walk away. Then, without warning, he turned back and opened fire.
A burst of gunfire hit the three hunters. One was able to reach his walkie-talkie and call for help. Others in the party rushed to the scene. The man kept firing.
Willers, along with Drew´s brother-in-law, Lauren Hesebeck, 48, was seriously wounded.
At the time of his arrest, Vang was wearing a hunting license pinned to his orange vest, as required by law. The same tag number was scrawled in the dust coating one of the victims´ all-terrain vehicles. The hunter apparently had jotted it down, planning to tell a ranger about the trespasser, before the shooting erupted.
Sawyer County Sheriff James Meier said Vang was "extremely calm" at the time of his arrest and had been "showing some cooperation" with authorities. The 20-round clip of his rifle, an inexpensive Chinese-made SKS assault weapon, was empty when he was arrested.
Police in St. Paul and Minneapolis have had contact with Vang several times in recent years. In the last 18 months, they responded to two domestic disturbance calls to his house. And on Christmas Eve in 2001, he was arrested for felony domestic assault after his wife told police he had threatened her with a handgun. He spent two nights in jail but was released when his wife declined to press charges, according to Minneapolis Police Officer Ronald Reier.
"We have nothing in our records that would ever indicate he was capable of the level of violence we saw in northwestern Wisconsin," said Officer Paul Schnell of the St. Paul Police Department.
Crime rarely blights this expanse of rolling hills and scattered farms about 120 miles northeast of Minneapolis. Birchwood, famed for its bluegill fish, had 518 residents in the last census.
"We´re up here in the sticks…. Stuff like this just doesn´t happen here," said Wes Winrich, who runs a hunting guide service in this lumber town.
But as several locals pointed out, the nine-day fall deer hunt always draws plenty of outsiders.
Wisconsin counts on hunters for an economic boost estimated at $1 billion a year. About 640,000 hunting licenses are issued annually statewide, including 32,000 sold to visitors from every state in the nation and more than a dozen foreign countries.
In northwest Wisconsin, the deer are so plentiful — and so prone to collide with cars — that carcasses can be seen alongside many roads. Hunting season is more than tradition here; it´s almost a sacred ritual. (A Birchwood church even sponsors an annual "bless the hunter" service.) Some schools close during the deer hunt. Many people take time off work. Generations of families go out to hunt together for meat they will eat all winter.
Some veteran hunters said Monday that they had had problems with out-of-towners who didn´t know how to read the maps that marked which tracts of forest were private and which were open to the public.
And several in this overwhelmingly white region voiced particular unease with hunters who, like Vang, were from the Hmong community — immigrants from Laos who moved by the thousands to Wisconsin and Minnesota in the last decade.
Acknowledging that "fear is running around the community," Oman urged his neighbors not to give into hate. "Tonight is just the beginning of us drawing together as a community," he told the crowd of about 300 who gathered in the biting cold.
The slayings prompted at least a few hunters to put away their camouflage for the season. Californian Cecil Celler said he had flown to northern Wisconsin from Riverside to bag a deer — but turned around and headed to the airport as soon as he heard the news. "I just don´t want my deer that bad," he said.
Many others headed into the chill with their rifles as usual Monday, determined to enjoy the hunt even as law enforcement officials from nearly a dozen agencies combed the crime scene for evidence. Many came to the candlelight vigil wearing their blaze-orange caps and license tags.
"I don´t care who that guy is, he´s not scaring me away from my trip," said Roger Widiker, 61, who traveled from Milwaukee.
His son, Mike, was more cautious. "Yes, we went back out there today, but it´s still scary," he said.
"None of us really know what to do or feel right now," said Sheri Mlejnek, 39. Her husband is related to two of the slain hunters — Robert and Joey Crotteau.
"I can´t believe it, really," said Darwin Wosepka. Laski, who was his neighbor, managed a lumberyard and had three children. "A real nice family," he said.
He searched for words to describe his emotions, and came up with simply: "Shocked."
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