Breaking News

Since I find that most attached AP stories are lost after awhile, I'm attaching a copied and pasted a version of the above story for future...really future reading.

Autumn Tradition Turns Deadly in Wisconsin
Mon Nov 22, 6:50 PM ET

U.S. National - AP

By JOSHUA FREED and ROBERT IMRIE, Associated Press Writer

BIRCHWOOD, Wis. - As several deer hunters made their way through the woods of northern Wisconsin, they were startled to come upon a stranger in their tree stand. But what happened next was even more astonishing.

Asked to leave, the trespasser, wearing blaze-orange and carrying a semiautomatic assault rifle, opened fire on the hunters and didn't stop until his 20-round clip was empty, leaving five people dead and three wounded, authorities said.
The shooter was eventually captured.
The killings baffled authorities and stunned residents in a state where deer hunting is a rite of autumn — a sport practiced by thousands of people who scour the woods for nine days each November with hopes of bagging a trophy buck.
"This is an incredible tragedy, one in which a great family tradition like a deer hunt has turned into such a great loss," Gov. Jim Doyle said Monday.
Police identified the shooter as Chai Vang, 36, a hunter from St. Paul, Minn., who is a member of the Twin Cities' Hmong community. While authorities do not know why he allegedly opened fire, there have been previous clashes between Southeast Asian and white hunters in the region.
Locals have complained that the Hmong, refugees from Laos, do not understand the concept of private property and hunt wherever they see fit. In Minnesota, a fistfight once broke out after Hmong hunters crossed onto private land, said Ilean Her, director of the St. Paul-based Council on Asian Pacific Minnesotans.
The five killed and three wounded were part of a group of 14 or 15 who made their opening-weekend trip to Robert Crotteau's 400-acre property an annual tradition.
The visit was like any other until around noon Sunday. When two or three hunters spotted a man in their hunting platform in a tree on Crotteau's land, they radioed back to the rest of the party at a cabin nearby, and asked who should be there.
"The answer was nobody should be in the deer stand," Sheriff James Meier said.
One of the men approached the intruder and asked him to leave, as Crotteau and the others in the cabin hopped on their all-terrain vehicles and headed to the scene.
"The suspect got down from the deer stand, walked 40 yards, fiddled with his rifle. He took the scope off his rifle, he turned and he opened fire on the group," Meier said.
One of the men who was shot called for help on his radio, but it was too late. The gunman fired again, hitting the people who had just arrived on ATVs.
The gunman was "chasing after them and killing them," Deputy Tim Zeigle said. "He hunted them down."
It is unclear whether anyone returned fire. The members of the hunting party had only one gun among them.
The scene Meier described was one of carnage, the bodies strewn around 100 feet apart. Rescuers from the cabin piled the living onto their vehicles and headed out of the thick woods.
"They grabbed who they could grab and got out of there because they were still under fire," Meier said.

Someone in the group wrote the suspect's hunting license number, which hunters wear on their clothing, by tracing it on a dirty vehicle, Meier said.
The shooter took off into the woods and eventually came upon two other hunters who had not heard about the shootings. Vang told them he was lost, and they offered him a ride to a warden's truck, Meier said. He was then arrested; authorities plan to bring charges against him later this week. Investigators said Vang was cooperating.
Vang was carrying an SKS 7.62-mm caliber rifle, a cheap but powerful semiautomatic weapon, authorities said.
Mike Bartz, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resource's regional warden supervisor for the area, said the SKS is legal for hunting in the state and has no restrictions. He said it is not uncommon to see hunters with the guns.
"We see more and more of them being used. They're a fairly cheap weapon. They fire a cartridge very similar to a .30-30, which is a very common weapon used for deer hunting," Bartz said.
Killed were Crotteau, 42; his son Joey, 20; Al Laski, 43; Mark Roidt, 28; and Jessica Willers, 27.
Her said people in St. Paul's Hmong community have described Vang as an avid hunter. About 24,000 Hmong (pronounced "mung") live in St. Paul, the highest concentration of any U.S. city.
"They said he loves to hunt," Her said. "He is a hunting zealot."
Meier said Vang was on the wrong tree stand because he had become lost and wandered unknowingly onto private property. The county has thousands of acres of public hunting land.
Sang Vang said it was out of character for his older brother to blow up.
"Maybe something provoked him or something. He is a reasonable person," he said. "I still don't believe it. He is one of the nicest persons. I don't believe he could do that. We are so devastated right now."
The arrest has left some Hmong citizens in his hometown fearful of a backlash.
Michael Yang, a Hmong activist, said various Hmong groups held an emergency meeting Monday to talk about how to respond. Those at the meeting heard stories from some Hmong hunters about friction with white hunters.
The shooting has already provoked racial tension in an area of Wisconsin where deer hunting is steeped in tradition.
"It's pathetic. They let all these foreigners in here, and they walk all over everybody's property," said Jim Arneberg, owner of the Haugen Inn in nearby Haugen.


Hunter describes unusual day in the woods

Dennis Anderson
Staff Tribune Staff Writer
Published November 22, 2004

Nearby hunter describes unusual day in woods

Al Widiker hunts about a quarter-mile from the camp where five people were killed and three were wounded Sunday, and he said that he believes his party was inside its cabin having lunch when the shooting happened.
"Otherwise we would have heard it," Widiker said in a telephone interview Sunday night. "The hunters who were shot own 80 acres next to thousands and thousands of acres of county-owned [public] land."
After finishing lunch, Widiker and his party hunted a parcel of land in a direction opposite that of the neighboring 80 acres. "But it was pretty hard to hunt, because there was a plane flying low over us in the afternoon," he said.
Later, he learned it was a police or sheriff's airplane.
Also while hunting Sunday afternoon, Widiker heard cars on nearby roads repeatedly honking their horns. Friends and relatives of hunters in the woods, he said, were trying to alert them to quit hunting.
"What they understood at that time was that a man wearing camouflage clothing was in the woods, shooting hunters," Widiker said.
As his party departed their hunting area, Widiker said, they were stopped by authorities who checked their car registration and ID. They were then advised to remove their blaze orange clothing before continuing.
Widiker said he was told the suspect had been confronted that morning by one or more of the hunters who were later shot. The suspect was hunting on the 80 acres owned by the men and was told to leave.
Hmong hunters commonly gather to camp and hunt on the public land during the nine-day Wisconsin firearms deer season, Widiker said. The season began Saturday.
Early Sunday evening, officers arrested a 36-year-old St. Paul man, Chai Soua Vang, in connection with the shootings.
"There are square miles and square miles of public land next to that 80 acres," Widiker said. "Why would anyone want to hunt that private land when there was so much public land nearby?"
Widiker's party did not return to its hunting camp on Sunday. They plan to clean out the cabin today and not go back until next season.
"Who wants to be the next guy in a tree stand if someone comes shooting?" he said.

Never a dull moment at The Lake. Al Widiker is one of my neighbors at The Lake. Actually, this was more then a bit unusual for The Lake. This sort of thing doesn't happen. I guess this was a first? Deer season opened and someone (a weekender from St. Paul, Minnesota) went nuts near The Lake and killed 5 local hunters and injured 3 more and The Lake made National News. I was relieved to hear that my brother-in-law and our nephew weren't tangled in the incident. They had gone hunting up at The Lake over the weekend. If they had encountered someone hunting on our property, they too would have asked the intruder to leave. One of our friends and neighbors, a deputy sheriff, has always kept an eye on our property for us during the winter months. He has often encountered trespassers on our property and has had to ask them to leave. This whole incident happened way too close for my comfort. It makes you a bit scared of what some people are capable of doing even in the peaceful environs of The Lake.

Murphyism of the Day

When news reporters report the news, they rarely report the actual facts.