Jury Selection Begins in Deer Hunter Slayings

A year after six deer hunters were shot to death in a confrontation with another hunter, jurors will be selected this week in a university town 300 miles to the south of where the slayings occurred. The jurors will be bused from Madison to Hayward to attend the trial.

Eyewitnesses and friends of the dead men portray the slayings as cold-blooded, but Chai Soua Vang, a 36-year-old St. Paul, Minn., truck driver, says he was shot at first and acted in self-defense after the hunters tormented him with profanities and racial insults.

“The guy admitted he shot people in the back,” said Larry Jarvela, mayor of Rice Lake, where the victims lived. “Some people are upset that they are going to bring all the liberals up from Madison for the jury.”