THE JACK YANTIS TRAGEDY By Heather Smith-Thomas The lives of an Idaho ranch family changed forever during the evening of November 1, 2015, with the shooting death of Jack Yantis. This tragedy was totally unexpected, and began with a phone call interruption during supper at the Yantis home, about 7 p.m. that evening. Jack (age 62) and his wife Donna (63) were eating their evening meal at their ranch in Adams County, about 6 miles north of Council, Idaho, along U.S. Highway 95. The phone call was from the dispatcher at the County Sheriff’s office, telling them that one of their bulls had gotten out on the highway and had been hit by a vehicle—and that Yantis was needed at the scene to put down the injured animal. The 5-year-old black Gelbvieh bull was hard to see in the dusk, and had been run into by a Subaru. The driver of the vehicle, Jack Gardner, and his wife Doris, were driving home to Nampa, Idaho after visiting family in La Crosse, Washington. This area along Highway 95 is open range and it’s not uncommon for cattle to wander onto the highways, and is marked with signs warning drivers to watch out for livestock. This bull, however, had gotten out of a fenced pasture. Gardner later stated that when he drove around a corner he didn’t have time to miss the bull. When his car struck this large animal (which was bigger than the vehicle, according to the tow-truck driver who came later to remove it) the bull rolled over the hood and hit the windshield. Gardner was able to push his way out of the squashed car, but his wife Doris was more severely hurt in the crash, with multiple broken bones in her neck, skull and chest, a concussion, and many deep cuts. After first-responders arrived and got her out of the wreck, she was taken by air ambulance to St. Alphonsus Regional Medical Center in Boise. Meanwhile, the bull wasn’t killed in the collision. He was badly injured and on the fight-charging at the police and at the medical responders who were trying to extricate the Gardner couple from the wrecked car. The two deputies who had been called to the scene of the accident requested that Yantis come take care of his bull. After receiving the phone call, Jack and Donna Yantis immediately left the supper table and hurried to the highway, with Donna taking along Jack’s rifle so her husband would be able to put the bull out of its misery. They also called a nephew, Rowdy Paradis, and asked him to bring their front-end skid loader and a chain, so they could remove the bull from the highway after putting it down. Paradis arrived with the skid loader about the same time Jack and Donna got there. He parked it on the highway and aimed the lights of the skid loader toward the bull that was by that point lying down. Donna had the rifle and handed it to her husband who approached the bull. Yantis stood in the headlights of the skid loader for a good view, raising his gun to shoot the bull in the back of the head, with the two deputies standing behind him. According to Donna’s statement later, when they arrived at the highway, Jack walked up to within about 4 feet of the bull (with his back to the deputies) and was preparing to shoot the animal, when one of the deputies came up behind him and jerked him backward, almost off his feet, possibly causing his rifle to discharge. The deputies had been standing in the far lane behind Jack, facing each other as if they were talking. Suddenly one of them turned and grabbed his shoulder, jerking him backward, spinning him around and grabbing the scope of the gun. Paradis later said he wasn’t sure if the rifle discharged accidentally when the deputy grabbed it or when one of the deputy’s bullets pierced Yantis’ hand that was holding the gun. One of the deputies began shooting at Yantis, then the other started shooting, as well. That’s when Donna and Paradis tried to run to Jack but were grabbed by the deputies and thrown to the ground. Afterward one of the deputies walked over, pulled Yantis’ rifle from under his body, and threw it into the grass. At that point the bull was still alive, but Jack was dead. A friend of the family later said, “It is hard to make sense of why the deputy grabbed Jack when he was clearly preparing to proceed in what is a routine procedure (to put down an injured animal). I am
sure he wasn’t the happiest camper at that moment, putting down a bull he knew well enough to name—a bull that had just been gut-shot by deputies--but no one there, and no one in this town who knew him, can imagine that he was threatening people. The sequence seems to be that he was preparing to shoot the bull, the deputy jerks him up, the gun goes off--his finger was probably on the trigger--and the cops start blasting. One piece of info from the gossip mill was that there was a bullet hole in the side of the rifle stock.” Jack’s wife, Donna, in an interview later by reporters, said, “I don’t know what the deputies told him, but they just opened fire and shot him. Then they threatened me and my nephew Rowdy Paradis, threw us on the ground—right in the middle of the highway—then searched and handcuffed us and wouldn’t let us go to Jack, who was lying there on the highway.” Donna had been standing about 20 feet away from her husband when both deputies shot and killed him. The horror of it all was too much. After she was thrown to the ground by one of the deputies, she suffered a heart attack and was taken to St. Alphonsus Regional Medical Center in Boise, where she spent several weeks recovering. Her statement to the reporters was from her hospital bed. Community Sympathy And Support November 8 (Sunday evening), a week after Jack’s death, 70 people attended a prayer vigil for the family. Council is a very small rural community (population 800) where everyone knows everyone, and everyone was devastated by this tragedy. Much of the local reaction was shock, disbelief, and outrage. Family and friends, including Becca Barrow of Kuna, Idaho (who grew up in Council) organized a peaceful protest rally and a group march that took place on Saturday, November 14. This event was organized through a Facebook page set up by Becca, called “Justice for Jack”. About 75 people participated in the mile-long march that started at noon at the Council Elementary School and ended at the Adams County Sheriff’s Office. The route through town was along Highway 95. The marchers stood in quiet protest for a while outside the Sheriff’s Office. Becca told reporters that the rally and protest march was a demonstration to show the world that the community supports the Yantis family. “Jack’s daughter Lauretta was my softball and basketball coach in high school. We are all in shock that this tragedy happened in the tiny little town of Council. I would never have guessed that something like this would happen here. It bothers a lot of us that it did,” she said. She wanted everyone to know that “we all deserve to live in a safe, peaceful environment where police are there to protect us” rather than shoot us. She and the other organizers of the march requested that no guns or weapons be brought to the event, because they didn’t want their peaceful protest to escalate to the point of having any police involvement. She brought her two young children along with her on the march. Participants carried signs that displayed their message and protests, such as “Murder is legal if you are a cop” and “What happened to de-escalation?” The protesters were also upset that the Sheriff, Ryan Zollman, had not yet released an official statement about the shooting, nor the names of the deputies who shot Yantis. A public memorial service for Yantis was held the next day (Sunday, November 15) at the High School in Council, located right along the same highway, 6 miles from where Yantis was shot. Friends of the family created a GoFundMe online account to gather donations to help raise money for the Yantis family’s expenses. Jack and Donna’s daughter was able to use that fund to aid in caring for Donna after she was released from the hospital. Concerned and outraged friends, neighbors and other members of the community, along with sympathizers and supporters, held a demonstration November 21, 2015 in front of the Ada County Courthouse in Boise. They held signs demanding justice for Jack Yantis and demanding the release of the audio and video record of the shooting incident. As one of the supporters stated, “This is not an anti-cop protest. This is a demand for justice.”
About 25 ranchers and other supporters called for the release of more information from the police. They planned to continue having future rallies in front of the Courthouse in Boise to express their concerns about the way this situation was handled and the tragic, unnecessary death of Jack Yantis. Still Waiting For Answers Many questions about the incident are still unanswered. A week after Yantis’ death, the Adams County Prosecutor asked the Idaho Attorney General’s Office to step in as special prosecutor, since the local Sheriff’s Office was involved in the shooting. The County didn’t want their own prosecution to look like a conflict of interest. The Idaho State Police and the FBI were also conducting their own investigation of the incident. The FBI wants to try to determine if the deputies intentionally shot Yantis, and also whether they used excessive force during the incident. Wendy Olson, the U.S. Attorney for Idaho, told reporters that the ISP and State Attorney General’s Office are both looking at possible state criminal violations and at the federal laws that prohibit a law enforcement officer from willfully and intentionally depriving a person of his/her legal and constitutional rights. Sheriff Ryan Zollman hosted a town meeting at the local Assembly of God Church, attended by more than 200 people who wanted to ask questions about the shooting death. Zollman spoke to the packed crowd (standing room only, in that small church) to try to explain to the public the process involved in this kind of investigation, and to ask for patience. His office had received about 30 e-mail death threats to him and his family from all across the country. One of the questions asked by several people at the meeting was whether there is video footage of the incident, since law enforcement officers are required to have body cameras or a squad car dash camera to record what happens when they are out on a job investigating or apprehending someone. Sheriff Zollman told the press that he turned over all the video evidence to the Idaho State Police for their investigation. The public and the news media requested the names of the deputies involved in the shooting, but 37-year-old Zollman refused to release the names for several weeks. He said that he was concerned for their safety because of the death threats. At the town meeting he stated that these deputies were not rookies (one had 5 years’ experience in law enforcement and the other one had 15 years in this type of career). With all the public concern and outcry, the two deputies involved in the shooting (though still unnamed by the Sheriff’s Office) were temporarily removed from their jobs—on paid vacation. Sheriff Zollman told the public only that he would reinstate them as soon as the country insurer gave its approval. Everyone locally knew who they were, however, and eventually their names were officially released, four weeks after the shooting. Neither one of them had been with the Sheriff’s Department in Adams County for very long. Brian Wood (age 31), one of the deputies involved in the shooting of Yantis, had worked in this position for just over two years. He was hired on June 27, 2013, about a year and a half after being terminated by the McCall Police Department following an incident in which he arrested 78year-old Rodney Whaley of Cascade, Idaho for speeding. When Whaley resisted arrest, Wood bodyslammed Whaley (a heart patient in ill health) who suffered serious injuries in the assault. The injured man filed a federal lawsuit that resulted in a settlement from the city of McCall. The other deputy involved in the Yantis shooting is Cody Roland (38 years old). He had only been employed for 4 months in Adams County, even though he’s had a 15-year career in law enforcement. He came to this job after being employed by 5 other law enforcement departments across the state. The Yantis family learned that about 14 years ago he abused a disabled veteran that he suspected of being drunk, just because the disabled man was unable to walk a straight line. The cops threw him on the ground. Many people feel that this kind of excessive force is wrong. A few people are pointing toward Yantis’ earlier run-ins with the law as a factor in the shooting, even though he had no serious convictions. He had a charge of “resisting and obstructing” in 1997—which
resulted in a $300 fine, brief probation and a withheld judgement. His only other offense on record was a 2002 DUI which resulted in a $675 fine, 16 hours of alcohol education, and 3 days in jail. The “official” story by the Adams County Sheriff’s Department seems to be that Yantis was a “hard drinker” and that the deputies thought he was intoxicated that evening. Their rationale for shooting him could then be that he was drunk and they perceived themselves to be in danger. This rationalization seems outrageous to the people who knew Yantis. News stories have quoted his family and friends as saying that he was an honest man, soft-spoken. One neighbor stated that Jack did have a bit of temper, “but if you knew him, you know he was not the kind of person who would ever pull a gun on anyone.” Until the investigations are finished, we won’t know why the deputies shot him, and we may never know. It might possibly be a combination of miscommunication, adrenaline and inexperienced deputies who didn’t know how to euthanize the bull or deal with a rancher who might have been upset at their ineptness that was prolonging the animal’s suffering. According to one news report, the deputies did plenty of shooting, even while waiting for Yantis and the skid loader to arrive, but didn’t know how to kill a bull; their shots merely made the injured animal more upset and aggressive. Deputy Wood was a trained sniper, but his attempt to put the animal down had failed, and the bull was still trying to charge at people. Wood also had no training in de-escalation in tense situations, no training in people skills or communicating with the people he has to deal with in his profession. Rowdy Paradis told reporters that he felt law enforcement officers should be trained to de-escalate situations like this. “It this case, I stood 10 feet away and watched two deputies escalate the situation, and needlessly kill a man.” Idaho Secretary of State Lawrence Denny (who earlier represented Adams County in the Idaho House of Representatives for 20 years and knew Yantis personally) told reporters that Jack Yantis was a typical cattle rancher. “He loved the outdoors and he loved animals. I know the whole community is in mourning.” On November 18, Beth Paradis stated that it was still hard to believe that Jack was gone, and that her family would no longer be able to see his smile and hear his infectious laughter. “It’s hard to believe we will never see him again. We’ve had to sit and wonder why this happened. Even if we could turn back time, nothing would change because as soon as he found out that his animal was hurt, he would have done the same as he did that night—go down the driveway to put Keiford out of his misery. This man was a hero to his grand nephews and a great friend to pretty much everyone who met him. The world has lost an amazing man but heaven has gained one hell of an angel. I only hope that we on earth get the justice and answers that are so much needed and deserved.” Now, two and a half months after this tragic death, everyone is still waiting for answers. Meanwhile, the family suffers. Donna Yantis, though she is no longer in the hospital, has had a very hard time and continues to be in poor health, with a blood clot in the lower part of her heart. According to the wife of Jack’s older brother Alvin (also a rancher in the Council area), the family feels that Donna will never be the same again, and they are very worried about her. The investigations are on-going, and the family is not sure what is happening. The lawyers don’t tell them much. Many of their friends and other family members fear that there will just be some kind of cover-up. Several people called to tell them they had witnessed the incident and reported what they saw, but then the Idaho State Police responded by saying none of them were good witnesses. So everyone is wondering why the police took their names in the first place and wanted to question them. The family suspects that the results of the investigation will be slanted to favor the deputies. Their one hope is that the family’s attorneys will prevail, but at this point they are not very optimistic.
