Posted on 11/23/2004 11:17:04 AM PST by whodeani
Suspect says hunters provoked him
Vang says he was surrounded, called names and shot at before shootings
By JOHN DIEDRICH, LEE BERGQUIST and TOM HELD jdiedrich@journalsentinel.com Posted: Nov. 23, 2004
Hayward - The suspect arrested for shooting eight hunters, killing six of them, says he was surrounded by the group, called derogatory racial names and shot at before he opened fire, according to court records released today.
His account differs sharply from details released Monday by the Sheriff's Department and from the accounts from some of the victims, who describe an essentially unprovoked shooting rampage by Chai Soua Vang, a 36-year-old Hmong man from St. Paul, Minn.
Vang, a truck driver, is suspected in the slayings of six hunters and the wounding of two others, according to a probable cause determination signed by Judge Norman L. Yackel here this morning.
Vang is being held on $2.5 million cash bail.
Officials said the Wisconsin Attorney General's Office will prosecute the case, because of its scope and complexity.
Meanwhile, The two survivors continued to improve, officials said.
Terry Willers, the first hunter shot who was hit in the neck, was upgraded from serious to fair at St. Joseph's Hospital in Marshfield today.
Lauren Hesebeck, 48, was released from the hospital Monday night before 9 p.m. He was shot in the shoulder.
Theresa Hesebeck, also the sister of Denny Drew, who died Monday night, said the family was trying to regroup on Tuesday morning and that her husband was recovering at home.
"Your place is at home at a time like this," she said.
The couple have a blended family that includes seven children.
David Drew, a brother of Denny Drew, said Tuesday he was trying to come to grips with the death of his brother and close friends.
A prayer vigil is set for 7 tonight at the Holy Trinity Catholic Church in Haugen, where three of the victims lived.
Complete coverage of this story will appear online later today and in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in the morning.
More On The Victims:
Victims gathered at deer camp every year
By TOM HELD and MEG JONES
theld@journalsentinel.com
Posted: Nov. 22, 2004
Rice Lake - Deer camps are an institution in Wisconsin - families, friends and co-workers get together each year on opening weekend to head into the woods and hunt.
Every year they gather: Sons joining their fathers; nephews and nieces joining their uncles; friends joining their hunting buddies - all making sure their vacation days coincide with the annual nine-day season.
So it was for Bob Crotteau and his son Joey, for Terry Willers and his daughter Jessica, for brothers-in-law Lauren Hesebeck and Denny Drew, for Crotteau's neighbor and fishing buddy, Al Laski, and for Mark Roidt, who was joining the deer camp on 400 acres in southern Sawyer County for the first time, a guest of Drew.
They were friends and family coming together for the camaraderie and kinship that spur more than 600,000 people to head outdoors on the weekend before Thanksgiving - which is why it's so hard to understand why six are dead and two are now recovering from a hail of bullets fired at them in a dispute over a tree stand.
"When I first heard about it, I thought to myself, 'I hope it's not anybody I know,' " said Dan Lathrop as he shared beers at the Haugen Inn Monday afternoon. "Then it turned out, it's everybody I know."
Authorities released the names of the victims Monday, but most in this community and neighboring villages already knew who had been shot. Word quickly spread from tavern to tavern, gas station to grocery store, house to house. Just about everybody either knew the victims or was related to them.
The Crotteaus are a large family in the Rice Lake area. Four of the eight victims graduated from Rice Lake High School, which two days before the tragedy was playing in the state football championships in Madison.
Jessica Willers, 27, lived in Green Bay but returned to her hometown to hunt with her dad every year.
Joey Crotteau, 20, the oldest of three kids, worked pouring driveways and concrete foundations for his 42-year-old father who owned R&J Concrete. Terry Willers, 47, also worked for Bob Crotteau, who was on the Haugen Village Board for two years, until April.
Laski, 43, was manager of United Building Centers in Rice Lake and was a fishing buddy of the elder Crotteau.
Hesebeck, 48, and Drew, 55, sold cars at Link Brothers Ford in Rice Lake.
Roidt, 28, had started a new job two months ago installing floors for a Rice Lake firm. He met Denny Drew's brother, Don, a local race car driver, and was a member of the pit crew.
"It's just such a senseless crime," said Roidt's mother, Karen. "It's not just the eight victims and the families that are affected; it's so many other families who knew them and liked them."
Roidt, Jessica Willers, Bob and Joey Crotteau and Al Laski were shot to death Sunday, while Drew died of his wounds Monday. Authorities say Chai Vang, 36, of St. Paul, Minn. shot the six and two others after one of the hunters spotted him sitting in their tree stand on the private land.
Hesebeck was in fair condition Monday at Lakeview Medical Center in Rice Lake. Terry Willers was in fair condition at St. Joseph's Hospital in Marshfield.
"Everybody knows everybody around here. That's what makes it so tragic," said Steve Salmi, village president of Haugen, where the Crotteaus and Laski lived. "There's anger, denial and shock. It's just sad."
Big plans and dream homes
Jessica Willers, the oldest of three children, was planning an August wedding to her fiance, an engineer she met in Eau Claire, said her aunt, Gloria Willers. The couple moved to Green Bay within the last 18 months, where she worked as a surgical technician at a medical center.
"She was a very outgoing, bubbly person," Gloria Willers said. "She was very close with her brother and sister."
Roidt's mother, Karen, said she and her husband built their dream home on Hemlock Lake northeast of Rice Lake in 1997. Mark Roidt, who attended Waterford High School, moved from Racine County with them. But he lost his hunting buddy when his father, Larry, died four years ago of a heart attack.
"We built our dream home on the lake, and so far it hasn't been a dream," Karen Roidt said, sitting on her couch with a beautiful view of the lake.
She said her son loved driving fast, whether it was on a snowmobile or all-terrain vehicle or behind the wheel of his Toyota pickup truck he bought for $500 and built into a giant mud truck. Mark Roidt had to deflate the oversize tires just to get the vehicle inside the garage so he could work on it last winter.
She said her son and his buddies would work on the truck from Monday through Friday and then on Saturday would repair the damage caused by driving it on muddy tracks on Friday nights. Mark Roidt had gone elk hunting in Colorado with Denny Drew in September.
Karen Roidt was working at J.C. Penney in Rice Lake Sunday when she noticed some people crying as they heard the news of the shootings. About 15 minutes later, her boss told her to get her coat because he was taking her to Lakeview Medical Center in Rice Lake.
She feared the worst.
"I had a hard time getting up the steps into that room" where authorities gathered family members, she said. "They told me my son, Mark, had been one of the five that had been killed. My whole body shook, and I could not stop."
Dressed in a Green Bay Packers sweat shirt, Karen Roidt rocked gently on her couch as she talked about her only son.
"It just is so unreal. Here yesterday, gone today. It just doesn't make sense," said Karen Roidt. "I don't really know what I feel now. I suppose anger is mixed in there."
Outside the Crotteau and Laski homes in Haugen Monday, the streets were lined with cars as a steady stream of well-wishers carrying food dropped by. Both families declined to talk to a reporter.
Joey Crotteau was a 2002 graduate of Rice Lake High School, was active in technology education and liked to work with his hands, said District Administrator Paul Vine.
"He was just a very, very nice man, always had a smile on his face. He was well liked by other students," said Vine.
Counselors were called in to the high school of 850 because so many students either knew the victims or were related to them. Laski's daughter Gwen is a sophomore and his son Adam is a senior at Rice Lake.
"Bob and Joe (Crotteau) are from a very large family, a family that has tentacles in a lot of families here in our community," said Vine, who has been administrator for six years. "It's a family name that has been in Rice Lake for a long time, so you have relatives in every corner of our community."
The family of Denny Drew issued a written statement through St. Joseph's Hospital after his death. "The family wishes to express sincere thanks to the community for their heartfelt support during this very difficult time," it said. They declined to say anything else.
I haven't read through all of the recent posts so I am not sure if somebody has already linked to it but you can read the criminal complaint about this incident below.
http://www.wausaudailyherald.com/frontpage/pegl.pdf
Since he's 37 years old it would have to have been quite an experience.
Thank you very much for posting this. It does answer a lot of questions.
After reading it, I see that Chai Vang freely admitted shooting Joey Crotteau in the back after tracking him down. Also he admitts shooting Allan Laski and Jessica Willers before they could dismount the ATV they were riding.
What I find most confusing is in the middle of page 5 of the complaint. Vang claims that Terry Willers fired at him first, missing Vang and the bullet hit the ground 40 feet behind. It was then that Vang removed the scope, then returned fire.(2 shots) Think about that. Vang claims that he crouched down and then took the time to remove his scope all while under rifle fire and then returned fire. Hmmmmmmmmm . . .
Running your vehicle through the fields is hardly the same as simply walking along and unknowingly stepping onto somebody's land.
Thank you.
So my question still stands, is it the practice of this publication to publish the alleged murderer's race if he is Afro-American? If not, why now? Why is one man's racial anonymity more valuable than another's in their eyes?
incredible stuff. My heart mourns for these people.
That's my theory also. Once he killed the first victim, there is the little problem of covering the tracks of your crime. From everything I've read, the shooting was going 1 way and most, if not all of the other victims were unarmed.
Answer: Someone who has been shot. Especially, someone who has a chest wound. They can't say a heck of a lot, and they're mostly concerned with their own life at that point.
Ding! Ding! Ding! We have a winner!
Typical defense attorney spin.
Even here in Texas taking fire from one person does not permit someone to kill 5 UNARMED people.
On this topic, you sound like a DU troll.
I would think it'd be fairly easy to figure out if any of the hunters that were murdered fired off shots, just check the remaining rounds left in the gun.
I don't know about WI but when I hunted in MI you could only load 5 rounds in your gun at a time.
That's another reason in some states an SKS isn't an ideal gun to use, you have to put a plug in the clip so the gun can only carry 5 rounds.
That is the law in WI too.
Maybe there is a reason for his bizarre account -- he intends to plead insanity down the line, claiming a flashback from his Vietnam days.
If you are going to accept the word of a mass murderer that other people called him names, seems to me you can as easily accept his word that they fired at him.
What we need to do with this case is to disaggregate the varying and different claims, charges, countercharges and suppositions. For example, he may really have thought he was shot at, and he may have been, but by who? Lots of people out that day firing weapons hither and yon. Rounds gotta' come down somewhere. It may be unlikely that one came his way at just the propitious moment, but how unlikely?
Then there are these other guys on ATVs he didn't shot at. Did he meet them? Did they call him names? Maybe they were out doing a little manhunting too ~ we really, really, really need to look closely at those bullets don't we ~ unfortunately you'd accept the word of a mass murderer that he shot all those people himself.
Then there's the possibility he was NOT out there alone as he said. Where's his companion? Does he have involvement with a Hmong criminal gang? Was this an initiation, or what?
We can't let your political blinders get in the way of finding the other killers, if any, right? Or, maybe you know more about this case than you are saying. Confession is good for the soul. Time to call the sheriff.
So of course I'm going to jump on your idea that this guy is just blowing defense lawyer steam ~ BTW, he hadn't even seen a lawyer at the time of his confession. You did catch that, eh? Why do you think he hadn't seen a lawyer? Could it be that the minute he sees a lawyer he will no longer be able to protect his companion(s)?
Now, take a deep breath, drink your morning coffee, relax ~ the adults are in charge here and they will find out if this mass murderer told the truth, or if he's lieing through his teeth. Same with everybody else on the scene.
The tresspass is the same. From an enforcement perspective, you're adding on at a minimum an illegal operation violation, which means several hundred dollars to the county.
I got turned around in the woods last season. Got to a point where I was quite sure I was no longer on the property that I had permission to hunt. At that point I unloaded my weapon and continued trying to find my way. I figured, If I ran into the property owner, an empty weapon slung on my shoulder would show that I had no intent to trespass.
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