Posted on 10/07/2007 10:23:40 AM PDT by janetjanet998
Edited on 10/07/2007 10:34:41 PM PDT by Admin Moderator. [history]
Nothing seemed out of the ordinary Saturday night when Tyler Peterson met up with a bunch of friends in a parking lot behind a Crandon bank.
They talked about hunting, what to do later that night. Typical stuff. That was it. It was 8:30 p.m.
But before the sun would rise, Peterson, a 20-year-old, off-duty Forest County sheriff's deputy and part-time City of Crandon police officer, would be suspected of storming into his ex-girlfriend's house and killing her and five other young people at a party, including two of his best childhood buddies.
Another teen was critically wounded.
Peterson would later end up dead, shot by the Crandon SWAT team.
"He must have just snapped," said a close friend who had known Peterson since they were in kindergarten and talked to him in the parking lot Saturday night. "He seemed fine (at 8:30 p.m.)."
Authorities in Crandon, about 180 miles north of Milwaukee, did not release details of the killings or the names of the victims Sunday, but the Journal Sentinel learned from interviews with families and friends that the following were killed:
• Jordanne Murray, 18, Peterson's former longtime sweetheart, who graduated from Crandon High School in 2006.
• Katrina McCorkle, an 18-year-old senior at Crandon High.
• Leanna Thomas, also an 18-year-old senior at Crandon.
• Bradley Schultz, 20, a 2005 graduate of Crandon and a student at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee majoring in criminal justice.
• Aaron Smith, called "Chunk" by his friends, also a 2005 graduate of Crandon. His age was not available.
• Lindsey Stahl, 14, a freshman at Crandon.
Charlie Nietzel, 19, of the neighboring town of Pickerel was wounded. He was in critical condition late Sunday at St. Joseph's Hospital in Marshfield.
Because a local law enforcement officer was involved, the investigation is being handled by the state Department of Criminal Investigation. Officials would not disclose any information Sunday other than to say authorities responded to a report of shots fired at 2:47 a.m., and that six people and the killer were dead.
Three-term Crandon Mayor Gary Bradley expressed anger and frustration at the state's handling of the case, complaining about a lack of information for officials and families and the length of time being taken in removing the bodies from the home.
"Man, they paralyzed this town," he said.
Bradley confirmed that Peterson was shot and killed by the Crandon SWAT team Sunday afternoon, hours after the early morning shootings.
Although few in Crandon knew exactly what happened in Murray's home, in a town where the population barely pushes 2,000, seemingly everyone knew the victims or the shooter.
Fay Statezny has known the Petersons and the families of several of the other victims for 20 years or more. Statezny said Tyler Peterson was "a normal kid" who liked to hunt and fish and loved the outdoors.
He had grown up with Smith and Schultz, and they were all very close friends.
"We would all go mud-running and ice fishing," said Peterson's longtime friend from kindergarten, who didn't want his name published because of the sensitivity of the situation.
He said Peterson and Murray had been together for a long time and broke up earlier this year. He debunked rumors that Murray was dating someone else, sparking a jealous rage in Peterson.
Paul Pitts, a 17-year-old senior, said Peterson was the type of guy who was picked on by students when he was in high school.
Other friends and neighbors said Peterson, who was officially deputized in February, had recently completed special-forces-type training.
It made sense to Jenny Stahl that her 14-year-old daughter, Lindsey, should stay the night at Murray's house. After all, it was homecoming weekend; lots of kids were sleeping at friends' homes. It cut down on the late-night driving. It would be safer that way, they thought.
Lindsey Stahl and Murray both worked at an ice cream and hamburger stand called Eats and Treats in Crandon. They stopped at Stahl's home around 9 p.m. to pick up a change of clothes.
At 8 a.m. Sunday, Jenny Stahl got a knock on her door. Her neighbor told her of the slayings and took her to Praise Chapel Community Church, where she waited with the families of the other victims for word about their loved ones. Stahl hoped for the best.
"I thought maybe she wasn't there, maybe she got out," Stahl said in an interview in her driveway, where she stood with friends and neighbors hugging and drinking Pepsi.
She waited eight hours. At 4 p.m., authorities announced the names of the dead. Lindsey was on the list.
The 14-year-old's half brother, Ryan Coulter, 12, said his sister was smart and interested in issues ranging from global warming to animal rights.
"She probably would have changed the world, you know," he said.
Jenny Stahl grew up in Kenosha and moved her family to Crandon because she thought the small community would be a safer place for her children to grow up.
Elsie Murray, Jordanne's grandmother, said the family was not able Sunday to talk about what happened.
Friends said Jordanne lived in the lower level of the house and her father, Paul Murray, lived in the upper level.
Kelly Flanery, 15, a sophomore at Crandon High, knew all of the victims and said that in addition to working at the ice cream shop, Jordanne Murray worked at Subway in Crandon.
She "was like the nicest person. She was friends with everyone," said Flanery. "I didn't believe it at first. It didn't like sink in, it really hasn't."
Schultz grew up in Crandon but moved to Cudahy two years ago to attend UW-Milwaukee, where he was a junior, said his uncle Steve Bocek, who lives in Oak Creek. Schultz worked part-time at a Racine electrical supply company to pay for school.
The middle of three boys, Schultz often drove to Crandon on weekends to visit his mother, who is blind with retinitis pigmentosa, and younger brother.
"He was just always a nice kid, always polite. He just wanted to come down here to go to school so he could further his education," said Bocek, who last saw his nephew three weeks ago when Schultz visited to swim in Bocek's backyard pool.
Schultz, who had a girlfriend in the Milwaukee area, had played basketball and baseball at Crandon High School.
"He was such a good kid; who would ever expect this?" his uncle said.
McCorkle and Jordanne Murray had been "friends forever," said a former boyfriend of McCorkle's. McCorkle loved to play softball and was thinking about where to attend college, he said. And she was very tight with her family.
"Her family meant everything to her," he said.
Friends said Smith, or "Chunk," as friends called him, was into football and loved to fish.
"He was one of them guys that everybody gets along with," said a childhood friend who also grew up with Peterson and Schultz.
Smith's sister said her family was grieving and couldn't talk.
Thomas' grandfather, Roy Thomas, said his granddaughter has a twin sister, Lindsay. "She was a sweet little girl," he said tearfully before hanging up the phone.
As streets were barricaded near the shooting scene, the soul of Crandon seemed to shake with grief.
"This is affecting everybody in this small community," said Tom Vollmar, a Forest County supervisor who has lived in Crandon for 57 years. "There's no family that hasn't been touched in one way or another."
Schools Superintendent Richard Peters said the victims and Peterson were all "people who we have known or patted on the back or encouraged at one point in time."
Crandon High School's crisis team gathered twice Sunday. Counselors fanned out to area churches to help families and friends of the victims who had gathered there.
School is canceled today.
Praise Chapel Community Church Pastor Bill Farr was called by the Forest County Sheriff's Department at 6:30 a.m. Sunday and asked to open the church for victims' families and other members of the community. About 200 people showed up during the day. He said it took so long for authorities to release the names because state investigators were handling the case.
More than a dozen hours later, Farr was still at the church.
"This is going to take a long time for a community like this to get over," said Farr, who has lived in Crandon for many years.
Standing next to his pickup truck in the church parking lot Sunday night, Farr began to cry as he held hands and prayed with three other church members.
"We just really need everyone's prayers right now," he said.
He didn’t mention your town at all.
He is referring to the crowd on this board who will defend cops at any cost, regardless if they are completely in the wrong. And this crowd will defend them from any city.
In this case, it sounds like some deputy, who is probably a cop because he’s too stupid for the military, but became a cop because bullying people in adult society if frowed upon. He probably was in some crappy relationship with his girlfriend, and felt that he could shoot her because he’s entitled because he’s a cop.
Or maybe not. Who knows.
He’s spot on. There are people here who will defend cops no matter what.
I believe you will enjoy FR.
“Having a bad day?”
Yep, some cop across the river went nuts and killed a bunch of folks. You?
WOW. Unreal.
Oh yes, I lived in madison for a few years, and I do know those sort of people exist. Im sure that you are correct and he will have his share of supporters.
He called the step father of the girl that was killed to tell him what he had done and basically rub it in his face. He also told him that they would never get him alive. What sort of person does that, and what kind of person would actually take the side of someone that twisted?
I did hear that they had him in custody and that he was alive but I am not sure if that part is true or not yet. I sure hope so. He deserves to sit in prison for life.
Sounds like you are about to go off the deep end.
Hey all, I’m new to the forum. Just did a google search about the crandon shooting. I was pretty shocked, considering I was just at the witnesses house yesterday. Very unfortunate that something like this has happened. My grandpa used to be on the crandon police force years back, and of course he had to throw in his two cents and thinks it was just a cop out of control learning that his girlfriend was at a party across the street (the house was right across the road from the police dept.) and he lost control of himself. Assumption of course. Of course, having family in Crandon, what I heard through the grapevine is that the guy fled to his parents house in a nearby town to say goodbye to his parents. All rumors, but it’ll be interesting to see the story unfold.
Soooooo, is he a møøslimb? <-—— obligatory speculation...
“He called the step father of the girl that was killed to tell him what he had done and basically rub it in his face”
Man, that’s cold.
Welcome to FR!
I hope all who you know are OK.
Welcome to FR
That’s a bit much.
“Sounds like you are about to go off the deep end”
Tell me, Doctor, how did you come up with this diagnosis so quickly and without so much as the most cursory examination?
No, sounds pretty stupid to me.
Nobody would defend a cop over this.
Sounds like you two gun grabbers should go down South and protest those evil BP agents.
As we have learned over and over, the initial news reports of events are not reliable. I will watch the progress of this and see what the facts are after our journalist friends finish screwing up the initial reports and provide something like accuracy.
After all the facts are in, then I will make an informed judgement about the guilt or innocence of any accused be they police or civilians.
We as a society have made the decision to accept people going “nuts and killing bunches of folks”. We let them all out of the state mental institutions in the sixties and now we have our intermittent attrocities.
There will be some on the left who want to emphasize that this is a cop to further degrade our faith in our law enforcement institutions. It is not unknown, even in the state of Wisconsin for the media and our political leaders to make snap judgements about the activities of the police in valid law enforcement situations.
Both now and then, I probably will avoid smearing every reader of a fairly widely read website the way you just have. Perhaps you think it is better to react like Nifong and the Duke LaCross case or Murtha and the Haditha Marines, but that isn’t mark of a citizen who values a “system of justice”
It's so great to have a psychic on FR!
Now, for the rest of us who aren't, we have to wait and see how this shakes out. I'm surprised they haven't put out a photo of the guy (maybe they have, but I didn't see any when I googled) since he's still at large and you would think they would have easy access to one.
. susie
“Sounds like you two gun grabbers”
Been called a lot of things but never a gun grabber! LOL!
Enough is Enough! we've just got to take the guns away from the cops. /s>
When are people going to realize that people are people and things are going to happen. A disarmed society is is nothing more than a large target area for those who are armed be they criminal or representative of the government.
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When you were young and your heart was an open book
You used to say live and let live
You know you did, you know you did, you know you did
But if this ever changing world in which we live in
Makes you give in and cry
Say live and let die
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