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.
They can try, but success will be questionable. The general policy of letting rural sheriffs deputies take their duty weapons home is not really unreasonable for a small department with a lot of territory to cover.
Now the policy of hiring a 20 year old is somewhat questionable, especially if the training course is the common "community college" type of short course, with minimal field training. In a larger department, they'd have the "kid", even out of much more extensive training program, ride along with a veteran for a good long while. I doubt this little department can afford to do that. That being the case, they'd be better served by hiring veteran officers, either military veterans, likely to be a bit older and maybe quite a bit more mature (or at leas t you could base your hiring decision on a track record from their military service) or veterans of other larger police agencies.
I'm sure in this case the sheriff, and the Chief of police where he was a part timer, *knew* the kid for quite a while, as everyone in these small communities knows everyone else. Even if the Sheriff didn't know him, or didn't know him well, the Chief would have, and the Sheriff would have consulted with him before the hire..at least I'd hope so.
No they are not too young. But they've had more training, and have been instilled with more discipline. They also operate under the close supervision of their NCOs. A small department deputy and/or town cop is much more likley to have to operate on their own. Make a big difference. A larger department would have both more extensive training and would have the green guys, of whatever age, ride along with a more mature training officer, and probably for alonger time.
I recently had occasion to interact with and observe a young MP right out of training. He was operating on his own, but support, and his NCO or supervisor (they worked with civilian post police) was right at the other end of the radio, and much closer than would be the case for a small department, with a big county to cover, deputy . He still was a pretty nervous troop, unsure of himself, but friendly. And that only to take a report of minor fender bender.
Yeh, but the military has a couple of chances to weed 'em out. Basic and AIT (or whatever post Basic training is called in a particular service. Then then don't really trust 'em for a while, sometimes forever. For a good while, their NCOs watch 'em like hawks, sometimes apparently not too friendly hawks at that. (Appearances can be deceiving of course).
Guns are highly controlled on any military base. Basically except when on the range or in the field, no guns are allowed. Guns not in use are kept in a unit armory, not in the individual's quarters, be that a barracks, or on post housing. Although I have seen troops who were getting ready to be deployed carrying their individual weapons with them all day long, even in the mess hall, but they had no magazines, loaded or otherwise.
FWIW, the NCOs also watch the LTs, as do the Captains, Majors, etc. An LT can be a very dangerous creature. I should know too, I was one once, although in blue not green. And our (very technical) outfit didn't have enough Chiefs to raise us properly.
Uumm, you want to try that again? Maybe we can understand what you are trying to say. I think you are trying to say that they don't let the young solider go around unsupervised with weapons, which is quite true.
Although considering some of the officers, commissioned and non-commissioned alike, that I know, of several services (excluding the Marines, 'cause I don't know that many Marines and remembering that I *was* an officer myself) even their maturity is subject to question, as is that of engineers, programmers and pretty much all other so called adults, including myself at times.
That depends on wether it's a "strong mayor" town, or a mayor that is "first among equals" on the town council, but with an administrator hire by the council as a whole.
Remember though that he had been a city cop for a very short time, was only part time, and probably got the gig on basis of being a Sheriff's deputy. So blame the Sheriff, not the Mayor. Since most sheriffs are elected, the voters can fix the problem at the next election. (Or the county commissioners sooner than that if they instead hire the sheriff, doubtful but possible)
She probably was not his "former" girlfriend when he was hired by the Sheriff.
Not all. I only got into two, both sort of forced on me, and neither anything beyond a shove and a little grapple. The first one was in elementary, and he's my bud now, since I turned out not to be the total wimp he thought I was, and he decided not to be the bully I thought he was. (We share a name, although it's only my nickname). I never did know who the second one was, some Jr. Hi. upperclassman who backed right off when I jumped up and got right in his face.
It helps to be a "big guy", I admit.
I know a guy who went through one of these in Arizona last year. They asked for the names of every person he had slept with, along with contact information, all the usernames he had used on the internet and a list of his favorite forums, and of course, his signature to release the information. That in addition to all the bank accounts, credit accounts, Equifax, etc etc.
It is clear this town isnt doing the same sorts of things.
Got a link?
Yeah, he would be dating a minor which wouldnt fly either in a big city.....dont know what the age of consent in Wisc is though.
>>>She probably was not his “former” girlfriend when he was hired by the Sheriff.
I don't think it would be all that unusual for a deputy in a small rural department. Could be a long ways from wherever one might be, to where he'd needed. But if that's department policy, then really should screen the folks before they issue that long rifle. Not that it would matter, he could have walked in to a gun shop and bought one just like it. Something which I'm thinking maybe I should do, sooner rather than later.
“According to a FOX News report, the town’s mayor claims the town is under a “gag order” regarding the overnight event.”
Easy enough to circumvent if you want to...
Did you read you own link ?? "the town’s mayor claims the town is under a “gag order” regarding the overnight event." (& you know the media whores want ALL the news right now)
The Mayor just 'claims' the town is under a 'gag' & 'lockdown" (never says he ordered it) Truth is prolly the Mayor, local cops/deputies, & most of the citizens were all *expected* to follow these orders.
I don't know who else would have such authority
How 'bout "state officials" who were called shortly after the incident (& were there before daylight) or maybe the FBI, who has also been reported to be there.
Did you read todays update ???
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.
When these small communities call for help from the "state officials", it's usually the "state officials" giving all the orders & making all the decisions as to the investigation......& I seriously doubt that any 'locals' were issuing "orders" to state officials/FBI.
Sounds like the Mayor might be a life-long area resident, just as upset about this crime (& it's handling) as ALL the residents are.
Yet, every post from you re: this Mayor says he's "POS", "dictator", and "The Mayor should be removed from office"...etc.
Thank-you.......it's SOP here in TX also if a small community has to call in "state officials" over a major crime.
and usually any "local officials" are ordered to shut-up & follow the "new orders".
It's ludicrous to believe that the mayor of this small town (w/ his 3 cops ??) was issuing any orders.
I questioned the 'mayor bashing' to both of you back in post 254, but never did receive a reply.
Maybe it's just me, but I can't see posting to such a tragic thread only to start criticizing so early on.
I thought this was a 'discussion forum', not a place to post accusations, without any facts.
and this will be day 4 since this tragedy, and very few facts have been released, yet.
This despite -dozens- of 911 calls with the shooters precise location.
And now yesterday we leaned that the perp is supposed to have shot himself in the head -three- times. This only happens in Arkansas.
Additionally the 911 tapes and arrest log are being withheld from the media in direct contradiction of the law.
Read this story which details the huge lapse in LEO response,
http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=672136
The state attorney general is saying he most likely killed himself... in the next breath he says he was shot four times, once in the arm and 3 times in the head. That doesn’t add up to me.>>>>>>
Got a link?>>>>>>>
Interesting.....that is what Att. General Van Hollen is saying.
(snip)
“Peterson was hit by four bullets - one to his bicep, which came from a long distance, and three to his head. Two of the shots were nonfatal wounds underneath Peterson’s chin, with the fatal shot entering the right side of his head, Van Hollen said. All three head wounds showed signs the gun was held against the skin.”
http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=672931
He was a big guy
He was always getting in fights. I remember when we were in elementary...
He would get in your face and shove....
Officers subject of misconduct claims
By JOHN DOBBERSTEIN
jdobberstein@journalsentinel.com
Posted: Oct. 9, 2007
“Tyler Peterson, whose shooting rampage in Crandon killed six people, and a colleague who first responded to the massacre are the subjects of misconduct claims by a Crandon couple they arrested in July.”
http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=673033
After reading a transcript of today’s press conference with the AG here’s some questions I have about what appears to be the most bungled and inept “manhunt” in US history,
- Exactly when in the History Of This Planet (other than in Arkansas) has anyone shot themselves three times in the head with a full power handgun?
- Peterson’s fourth wound was a non contact rifle wound. If a police sniper could hit him in the arm, why not a follow-up shot to prevent further action on Peterson’s part?
- If Peterson was on a cell phone, why was it so hard to determine his location, even if he tried to give a false location?
- If a responding Deputy was fired upon by Peterson, why wasn’t that Deputy able to regain/maintain contact with Peterson?
- The survivor of the Crandon massacre was conscious after the shooting and I presume knew Peterson. Was the survivor promptly questioned as to the identity of the assailant? There should have been no confusion as to whom the assailant was. Was there?
- Why are the arrests logs and 911 tapes not being made available to media requests? There is no law preventing these items being disclosed in a timely fashion
- How about the police radio tapes and police cell phone logs?
- What? “They have also asked me to ask the community at large to stop talking to the press. As such, we in the law enforcement community will do our part by having no further comments to the press from Forest County.”
10-09-07 WI AG Presser,
http://www.doj.state.wi.us/news/2007/100907_new.asp
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