Suspect Says Hunters Targeted Him With Slurs -- and a Bullet

The man suspected of killing six people in the woods of northwest Wisconsin told authorities that he opened fire after a group of hunters taunted him with racial slurs and shot at him. He continued firing as they scattered, he said, chasing them down even as they begged for help.

Chai Soua Vang, a Hmong immigrant from Laos, unfolded his version of Sunday’s rampage in chillingly meticulous detail after waiving his right to an attorney, according to court documents filed Tuesday. Charges have not yet been filed, but Vang remains in Sawyer County Jail. A judge has set bail at $2.5 million.

The carnage occurred against a backdrop of continuing tension between Hmong immigrants and local hunters in this overwhelmingly white region. Members of both groups said that several times a year they hear of arguments and threats -- sometimes at gunpoint -- as their cultures clash. Yet they emphasized that such disputes affect just a handful of the hundreds of thousands of hunters who take to the Wisconsin woods during deer season.

Precisely how Sunday’s confrontation escalated remains in dispute. In the victims’ version, recounted by a survivor, Vang opened fire unprovoked.

But Vang, 36, described a tense scene charged with the threat of violence well before he began firing.

The truck driver and father of six had come up from his home in St. Paul, Minn., intending to hunt on public land. He got lost in the dense forest and, wandering near a swamp, climbed onto a tree stand -- a wooden platform built on a branch. A hunter approached and told him he was on private property. Though he hadn’t noticed a No Trespassing sign, Vang said, he climbed down and walked away.

Then, Vang said, five or six hunters in all-terrain vehicles drove up and demanded to know why he had trespassed. He told them he was lost. They surrounded him and began spitting out racial slurs. The men told him they would report him to authorities. They cursed him. One of the hunters was carrying a gun, he said. Vang, walking away, turned and saw the gun pointed at him. He dropped to the ground. A bullet whizzed by him.

Then, Vang told authorities, he began to shoot his semiautomatic rifle.

He shot the man who had pointed the gun at him. The man dropped. The other hunters ran toward their vehicles. Vang kept shooting. More men fell. He chased those still standing, shooting one in the back. He heard the man groan. He walked past the body.

As the hunters’ friends -- alerted by walkie-talkie -- arrived in two more ATVs, Vang took off his blaze-orange coat and turned it inside out so the camouflage pattern showed. He reloaded. An ATV whipped past, a man steering with one hand and holding a gun with the other. Vang shot him and the young woman sitting behind him.

As he ran back toward the tree stand, Vang noticed that one of the men who first confronted him was still standing. “You’re not dead yet?” Vang yelled. And fired at him. Then Vang ran on.

Meanwhile, authorities said, the survivors were frantically gathering the wounded and driving them to the main road to find help. They had no room on their vehicles for the dead. The bodies, all in blaze orange, remained strewn across the forest floor where they had fallen.

“While running Vang decided that he did not want to shoot anybody else,” the report stated, “so Vang threw his remaining ammunition into a swamp.”

When he was arrested a short while later, his semiautomatic rifle was out of bullets. His demeanor, officials said, was completely calm.

Military records obtained by Associated Press show that Vang had spent six years in the California National Guard and earned a sharpshooter badge. But his primary role during his stint in the Guard, from 1989 to 1995, involved clerical duties.

Wisconsin Atty. Gen. Peg Lautenschlager, who has agreed to prosecute the case, said she expected to charge Vang before his first court appearance, set for next Tuesday.

James McLaughlin, Vang’s public defender, said Tuesday that he had been trying to meet with his client, hoping to consult with him before he spoke with investigators. “We’ve been denied access,” McLaughlin said.

But investigators said Vang, a naturalized citizen who came to the United States in 1980 and spoke excellent English, repeatedly told jailhouse authorities that he wanted to talk without a lawyer present and signed a form to waive his rights.

In the small town of Haugen, home to three of the victims, many refused to believe Vang’s account that he was the target of racial slurs before he snapped.

“We know each other. We know each other’s quirks and secrets,” said Jim Hill, the local grocery store owner. “What [Vang] said doesn’t fit. It’s not what our people would do.”

Brenda Hyllested, who runs the barbershop in the town of 287, was vehement. “There is no way they would have shot at him” or teased him with racial epithets, she said. Like many, she viewed Vang’s description of events as a slap in the face to the community. “It’s hard enough that they’re gone. But to hear this?” she asked. “Saying it’s somehow their fault? No. No.”

It’s not outsiders or immigrants that upset hunters -- it’s trespassers of any stripe, said Bill Turner, a board member of the Rod and Gun Club in nearby Rice Lake. “I don’t care what nationality you are, if you don’t follow the map and you stumble onto someone’s land, you’ll get yelled at,” Turner said.

Some Hmong hunters, however, said they had sensed a racial element to their disputes with locals.

Longtime hunter Joe Bee Xiong said some of his friends had had guns pointed at them in anger. A few have been shot at. He got into a fierce argument with a white hunter a few years back. Although the hunter did not use racial slurs, he made it clear he did not think a refugee from Laos had much right to bag deer in Wisconsin, said Xiong, who lives in Eau Claire.

Another time, white hunters occupied a tree stand he had built -- and refused to give it back. “I walked away because I didn’t want to get shot,” Xiong said.

On Tuesday, as they pinned on orange ribbons in memory of the victims, residents of this close-knit rural region continued to mourn. The three from Haugen were well known in town. Alan Laski, 43, ran a lumber yard and was always talking about escaping to the woods to hunt.

Robert Crotteau, 42, owned a company that poured concrete foundations. He also owned the deer cabin where the hunting party had planned to stay for much of Thanksgiving week. Crotteau’s son Joey, 20, the oldest of three kids, worked in his dad’s business. He is believed to be the unarmed man Vang said he shot in the back and then heard groan.

The other three victims were Mark Roidt, 28, and Dennis Drew, 55, of Rice Lake; and Jessica Willers, 27, of Green Bay.

Jessica’s father, Terry, 47, was injured and remained hospitalized Tuesday in Marshfield, Wis., in fair condition. The family had not planned Jessica’s funeral. They’re waiting a few days, hoping her father will recover enough to attend.