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Game Warden Testifies In Vang Trial

Hayward, Wis. (AP) ― A man in a blaze orange jacket frantically waved to the first law enforcement officers to arrive at the scene where six deer hunters were fatally shot last fall, a state game warden testified Monday in the trial of a Minnesota man accused in the killings.

The man told the officers his relatives were shot over a trespassing issue, and five already were dead, said Brian Knepper of the state Department of Natural Resources. A sixth died later at the hospital.

Knepper did not identify the man who met them near a driveway leading to the Sawyer County deer camp where 15 people had gathered Nov. 21.

As the murder trial of Chai Soua Vang resumed Monday, Sawyer County Circuit Judge Norman Yackel agreed to allow two photographers into the courtroom as long as they made less noise and took fewer photos.

He imposed the ban on still photographers Saturday after Vang's attorneys complained about the camera noise.

The trial opened Saturday with attorneys' opening statements and four law enforcement officials' testimony in a courtroom packed with nearly 100 people, most of them relatives or friends of the victims from nearby Rice Lake.

Vang, a 36-year-old Hmong immigrant and truck driver from St. Paul, Minn., is charged with six counts of first-degree murder and three counts of attempted murder in the shootings that erupted after the hunters confronted him for trespassing in a tree stand. He faces mandatory life in prison if convicted. Wisconsin does not have the death penalty.

Vang, a deer hunter since 1992, says he acted in self-defense after someone shot at him. Survivors of the shootings said Vang fired first, prosecutors said.

Gerald Kotajarvi of the state crime laboratory testified Monday that officers found 12 rifle shells in the woods at the shooting scene, and they were of the same caliber of the gun later seized from Vang.

One shell was found within 15 feet of one victim, 27-year-old Jessica Willers, Kotajarvi said.

He held up a Browning rifle that belonged to Willers' father, Terry Willers, and said the gun was found with four rounds in it. The gun could hold five rounds. Willers had the only gun found among the hunters, a Browning .270-caliber automatic rifle, investigators said.

Based on court records, the state's key witnesses are Willers and Lauren Hesebeck -- two hunters who survived wounds to either their neck or shoulder.

In opening statements, prosecutors said Willers found Vang in the tree stand on 80 acres of private land and asked him to leave. Vang climbed from the stand and was heading down a trail when two ATVs with the other hunters arrived, prosecutors said.

Assistant Attorney General Roy said one of the dead hunters, Robert Crotteau, a co-owner of the land, was angry at Vang and used profanity but not racial slurs in demanding him to leave. The only threat made was to report Vang to conservation wardens for trespassing by writing down Vang's hunting license number from a tag he was wearing on the back of his blaze orange jacket.

But Kohn told the jury Willers was "abrupt and antagonistic" when he first saw Vang, demanding he "get the hell off this property." Vang was leaving peacefully when the two ATVs with more angry hunters arrived, Kohn said.

Kohn said Vang came under a vicious verbal attack from the hunters, and he felt frightened and under siege.

Korte said Vang fired at least 20 shots, and one victim was killed after he ran nearly 500 feet away.

According to Korte, Vang tried twice to kill Hesebeck and fled from the scene only when Hesebeck shot back once with Willers' gun and missed.

Killed were Crotteau, 42; his son Joey Crotteau, 20; Al Laski, 43; Mark Roidt, 28; Jessica Willers, 27; and Dennis Drew, 55, all of the Rice Lake area.

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