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A psychiatrist says Chai Soua Vang had a history of suicidal and homicidal thoughts dating back two decades or more. Psychiatrist Robert Rawski examined Vang before the St. Paul man went on trial for the fatal shootings of six Wisconsin deer hunters. In the report -- obtained by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel -- Rawski also says Vang believed the voice of an "evil shaman'' has spoken to him occasionally since 1995.

A Minnesota truck driver serving life in prison for murdering six northern Wisconsin deer hunters last fall is no longer a suspect in the unsolved slaying of a deer hunter in Clark County four years ago, an investigator said Tuesday. Chai Soua Vang was working as a truck driver in the Twin Cities on the day James Southworth was shot, said Kerry Kirn, a detective with the Clark County Sheriff's Department. Southworth, 37, of Medford, was shot twice in the back near his tree stand on family land near Neillsville on Nov. 23, 2001, during the nine-day deer hunting season....

(Each was honored for ignoring the danger and rushing to help as a St. Paul hunter attacked in 2004. Two paid with their lives.) When deer hunter Chai Soua Vang, of St. Paul, opened fire on a large party of other hunters in northern Wisconsin in 2004, some of the people he killed, wounded and endangered were trying to save the lives of their friends and family members, according to official accounts of the melee. Five members of the party were recognized Thursday -- three posthumously -- with medals from the Carnegie Hero Fund Commission. The Pittsburgh-based fund carries out...

MADISON, WI (AP) -- The man serving life prison sentences for killing six deer hunters in northern Wisconsin in 2004 disagrees with his attorney that there are no grounds to appeal his convictions, according to court documents filed Friday. Chai Soua Vang, 37, mailed eight pages of handwritten documents from a prison in Iowa to the state Court of Appeals responding to his attorney's conclusion about the case, deputy clerk Sheelah Guild said. "There is no prove (sic) beyond a reasonable doubt that Mr. Vang intentionally killed those victims with the intent to kill," Vang wrote, repeating his trial testimony...

HAYWARD, WIS. -- Chai Soua Vang, who killed six Wisconsin deer hunters and wounded two others last fall, was sentenced this afternoon to life in prison with no possibility of release. Vang will serve six life sentences, plus five years for each, consecutively, said Judge Norman Yackel, in Sawyer County Circuit Court in Hayward. Yackel said the sentences are the harshest provided by the state and were justified by the gravity of the offense, Vang's character as well as a need to protect the community and deter future crime.

Tuesday, January 11, 2005 Wis. seeks more Hmong hunting instructors ------------------------------------------------------------------------ By Robert Imrie Associated Press — Jan. 11, 2005 WAUSAU, Wis. — A Hmong liaison officer for Wisconsin hopes to find another 20 volunteers from Hmong communities statewide to teach hunter education classes to aspiring new hunters. Kou Xiong of the state Department of Natural Resources says he is one of only three Hmong certified to teach the classes out of about 4,900 volunteer teachers, most of them white men. "We just cannot find anyone," Xiong said. "The Hmong kids just feel that if they have a Hmong instructor,...