“This one is kind of an odd situation,” said Sheriff Daryl Anderson. “We're still not sure what happened up there.”
The name of one of the teens - a 17-year-old boy recently relocated to Kalispell from Texas - is being withheld because of his age, Anderson said; and the victim's name likewise is under wraps until relatives in New York can be notified.
“They were arrested without incident,” Anderson said. “They actually kind of turned themselves in.”
But before all that, before they fled the scene in the victim's pickup and crossed the county line, the two teens “had sort of befriended the victim.”
The 67-year-old New Yorker had been floating around Lincoln County for weeks, Anderson said, going from one remote camp to another. “And we'd had complaints,” the sheriff said, “because he liked to brandish his guns. People who ran into him were afraid, and said he seemed a little, well, different, and not in a good way.”
Deputies tracked the man down at Howard Lakes about three weeks ago, Anderson said, and warned him to “move on and take it easy.”
The teens, however, had “somehow hooked up with him, and they were camped together up at Sylvan Lake.”
The Kootenai National Forest, on which the lake is located, describes the campground as “off the beaten path” and “usually not a destination site.” It's located 30 miles southeast of Libby, off Highway 2 on the way to Kalispell.
The trio had made camp there, Anderson said, “but something went wrong. There were bad feelings. The kids got tired of him, and caught a ride into Libby.”
Later, though, they hitched a ride back to the lake, presumably to gather gear they'd left behind.
“They got a lift from a guy in a white pickup truck with an extended cab and a blue or black stripe on the side,” Anderson said. “Promised him a meal if he'd take them up there.”
The driver, however, quickly left the camp when an argument broke out between the teens and the victim.
“We'd really like to talk to him, wherever he is,” Anderson said of the truck owner. “He knows what started it all, and what was happening before the shooting.”
Whatever happened, the victim ended up dead, quite likely from a shotgun wound, perhaps from one of his own guns.
“We're still waiting on forensics,” Anderson said, “but we do know he was shot more than once. Which, to me, raises some real doubts about the suspects' story of self-defense.”
The teens, he said, then stole the victim's truck and drove to Kalispell, where they told a relative “they had done something really bad up in the Sylvan Lake area,” Anderson said.
The relative immediately called local authorities, and the case landed on Flathead County Sheriff Mike Meehan's desk.
“We found the vehicle first,” Meehan said, “then we gathered up the suspects.”
One was at a local hotel, the other at a private residence. Both came in without a struggle.
Meehan's deputies interviewed the two, then sat in while Anderson's deputies interviewed them a second time.
“They gave us their statements, but it's still a little hazy what happened,” Anderson said. “We have a long ways to go on this one. At this point, it's hard to say how it all came down.”
Forensics might answer some of the questions, Anderson said, although “we still haven't established the motive.”
The victim's body is at the state crime lab in Missoula, “and we're still trying to find that white pickup truck. There seem to be a lot of mitigating circumstances around this one, and we'd really like to talk to anyone who can shed some light.”
Neither teen has yet been charged.
|
 |
 |
Add your comment now! Write your comment in the form below.
(Email address is for verification only. If you'd like to email a story, look for the link above)