Hmong immigrant admits killing six Whites, says they called him names,
fired first. Living witness says otherwise in court documents.
A sixth hunter died Monday night from injuries suffered in a massacre
committed by Hmong immigrant Chai Vang. Denny Drew, 55, of Rice Lake,
died Monday at St. Joseph's Hospital in Marshfield, his family
announced. Two other people who were wounded in the attack remain
hospitalized.
The dead were identified as the landowner, Robert Crotteau, 42; his son
Joey Crotteau, 20; Al Laski, 43; Mark Roidt, 28; Jessica Willers, 27;
and Denny Drew, 55. Willers' father, Terry Willers, remained
hospitalized Tuesday in fair condition, while the other wounded hunter
was released.
Sawyer County Circuit Judge Norman Yackel ruled Tuesday there was
sufficient evidence that Vang committed six counts of first-degree
intentional homicide and two counts of attempted first-degree
intentional homicide. He set bail at $2.5 million. Vang will appear in
court Dec. 20, court records said.
Vang says the group made racist comments and told him to get off the
property. As he walked away, he says he saw one White man point a gun at
him and shoot. That's when he opened fire, according to court documents
filed Tuesday.
The documents also show that at one point, Vang looked up and saw one of
the men was still standing and Vang yelled, "You're not dead yet?" Vang
says he shot one more time at the man. He also told investigators, as he
was running away, he decided he did not want to shoot anybody else so he
threw the rest of his ammunition into a swamp.
Vang's brother, Sang Vang, 33, said the killer was provoked by
derogatory racial comments. "He is a reasonable person," he said.
One of the witnesses, a hunter who was wounded in the shootings, gave a
statement contradictory to Vang's. Lauren Hesebeck said a member of the
hunting party shot at Vang only after he started firing at them and that
no racist comments were made, according to court documents.
Sawyer County Sheriff James Meier said there is evidence that Vang was
"moving around" as he stalked his victims. "I can only assume by the
location of the bodies and the type of woods they were in, that he would
have had to be moving around in order to inflict that kind of damage on
that many people," Meier said.
Meier also said that Vang fired over 20 rounds at the hunters from his
semiautomatic, and that two victims were knocked from their all-terrain
vehicles as they approached the scene, while others were "chased down"
and shot in the back.
Vang, unmarried, is a part-time truck driver and the father of six
children. He served in the U.S. Army for six years and speaks "pretty
good English," the brother said. According to the Milwaukee Sentinel,
Vang achieved the status of "sharp shooter" while in the Army.
Vang had been arrested once before, on Christmas Eve 2001 in
Minneapolis, after brandishing a gun and telling his "wife" he was going
to kill her, said Ron Reier, a spokesman for the Minneapolis Police
Department. He was arrested on a felony complaint of domestic assault,
Reier said. He added there had been two domestic violence calls to his
home in the past year, but both were "resolved without incident."
Meanwhile, Fox News reported that Vang had been arrested twice for
threatening with a firearm, but the charges were dropped when the
girlfriend refused to testify. (The issues surrounding Vang's criminal
history remain cloudy due to extremely vague controlled media reports.)
"We don't really know what went wrong. We don't know," said Deu Khang,
describing herself as Vang's cultural wife, not his legal wife. "I am in
shock. I don't have anything to say. I don't know what to say."
Vang's mother, Sao Hang, 54, does not speak English and declined comment
through an interpreter.
Cha Vang is the son of Hmong leader General Vang Pao (pictured), a
well-known opium trafficker and former commander of the CIA's secret
army in Laos from 1960 to 1975. No details are available as to where
"General" Pao is at the present time.
There are roughly 74,000 Hmong immigrants in Wisconsin and Minnesota,
according to the 2000 census. Many of the very pushy Hmong consider
General Pao to be a "hero" and have demanded that numerous parks and
bridges [in both states] be named after him.