Anti-hunter (?) or just a nut shot by cops in SD

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Witness: Shooter had been warned

Deputy defended in fatal confrontation

JON WALKER
jwalker@argusleader.com

Article Published: 10/18/05

Eric Christianson was a top student in high school, a saxophone player in the band, known in his hometown as a good guy who somewhere along the way began imagining trouble where there was none.

Late Saturday afternoon, he died when he confronted hunters with a handgun and baseball bat on a neighbor's land outside Wilmot, shot by a deputy sheriff after ignoring the warnings that could have saved his life.

The tragedy today is gripping Wilmot, a community of 542 residents in northeast South Dakota. The issue is personal in a town where, according to newspaper editor Nancy Minder, "everybody knows everybody."


And it's doubly painful in Christianson's family. His mother, Doris Christianson, with whom Eric, 46, lived, had sensed trouble the night before. And it was she who called the sheriff for help and then was present when the deputy killed her son.

"I was protecting Doris, trying to get her undercover," said Paul Serocki, on whose land the shooting occurred. "We were 50 feet away."

Serocki was one of eight people, including the deputy and four hunters, whom Christianson approached with the bat and gun. The deputy, whom officials are not identifying, warned Christianson three times to stop and drop his weapons, Serocki said. He dropped the bat, but not the gun. The deputy told the others to duck.

"When he told us to take cover, immediately I grabbed Doris and was trying to get behind the sheriff's vehicle," Serocki said.

A single shot killed Christianson.

The shooting was the first involving a South Dakota law officer in 2005 and the eighth since 2001. It is the first fatality since 2003, when Rapid City police killed three men in separate shootings, said Sara Rabern, spokeswoman at the South Dakota attorney general's office.

After an autopsy and investigation, the attorney general will issue a report, likely in about two weeks. The previous seven shootings involving law officers this decade were all determined to be justified, Rabern said.

News of the shooting spread through the town, a farm community in the state's northeast corner. The Rev. Mark Dierking, pastor of St. Stephen's Lutheran Church, said people he hears talking generally view the shooting as an unfortunate incident in which the deputy had no choice. "He went after the hunters' trucks. That's when the deputy was called," Dierking said. "And he fired a shot in the air."

Sherri Nordquist, 23, a stay-at-home mother of three, said many are debating what happened.

"People are saying, 'Oh, they could have shot him in the leg first,'" she said, but she supports the officer. "I know him to be a good, good deputy."

The deputy is on administrative leave, a standard procedure after such an incident, Rabern said.

Sheriff Rick Moen, whose office is in Sisseton, could not be reached Monday for comment. His office referred questions to the attorney general, who oversees the state's Division of Criminal Investigation. Kay Nikolas, the Roberts County state's attorney, said, "My office is aware of the situation. The DCI is in charge of the investigation at this point, and I'm not taking any further action until I get their report."

Serocki's farm is adjacent to a farm where Christianson and his mother lived northwest of Wilmot. The Serockis moved to the farm in 1988, and the two families have known each other well since Lloyd Christianson, Doris's late husband, asked Serocki to farm the land in the 1990s. He did so on a cash-rent basis, which legally would give him the privileges of ownership, including hunting rights, Serocki said Monday night.

Nonetheless, he knew the issue of hunting concerned Eric Christianson. Because some of the Christianson land was idle under the Conservation Reserve Program, he was mistaken about what was legal activity on it.

"He apparently thought the CRP land was government land and nobody could trespass," Serocki said.

Serocki's 18-year-old son and 22-year-old daughter, along with the daughter's fiance and the fiance's father, were to make up a hunting party of four on Saturday on the Christianson land. They called Doris Christianson Friday as a courtesy and she said the idea was fine. But Saturday morning she called back and said her son was uncomfortable with it.

So the hunters stayed on Serocki's land in an adjacent field. The boundary is clear, and members of the Serocki party parked their two pickup trucks on the Serocki land.

"The hunters did nothing wrong," Serocki said.

"It was just him in a state he was in," he said of Christianson. "He might have been confused."

Some other hunters had passed through on the CRP land earlier that day, which may have annoyed Christianson, Serocki said. He brought a pitchfork onto the Serocki land, punctured both back tires on one pickup and two of the four back tires on the other truck before retreating to his property.

Serocki's son saw this and called Christianson's mother. She called the sheriff and then began to make arrangements to repair the tires. She also came to the scene to speak with the hunting party.

Serocki was harvesting soybeans at the time about 10 miles away. He received a call from his daughter and drove home, stopping to pick up a neighbor on the way. When they all were present with the deputy near the two trucks, about a mile from the Serocki home, they heard a gunshot, then saw Eric Christianson walking over the crest of a hill with the bat and handgun.

The deputy began warning Christianson to drop the weapons.

"But he held onto the pistol and at the third warning started coming at the officer," said Serocki, 50. "He was moving in fast, in a brisk walk, and by the third warning was less than 50 feet from the vehicles."

The deputy stood up to Christianson while protecting the others, Serocki said. "The deputy handled the situation very professionally, the way they were trained to do it," he said.

Minder, owner and editor of the Wilmot Enterprise, the town's weekly newspaper, knew Christianson from high school. He was in the class of 1977. She graduated in 1978.

"Eric was a very smart kid," she said. "He was quiet, very smart, a good student, a friendly guy."

The Wolfpack yearbook noted that he was in the honor society, an academic honor, along with band and FFA.

"He minded his own business. He never caused much trouble," she said.

Sorecki said Christianson did not have a steady job but had worked a couple of temporary jobs the last five years.

"We did not know what his mental status was," Serocki said. "That's one of the reasons we asked Doris all the time if Eric was OK if we hunted there."

Nordquist said Christianson remained outside the daily flow of town life.

"Everybody in Wilmot knows everybody, except this one guy," she said.

Nordquist was in her yard hanging laundry on a clothes line late Saturday afternoon when the deputy drove past with his siren and lights on. She went to the scene herself sometime later and saw a dark green blanket and several small yellow flags indicating they were marking evidence and not to touch.

"The town is tiny, and everybody knows everything," she said. She said her father, Tom Nordquist, is police chief and that the deputy once helped her when her young daughter had a seizure by directing an ambulance to her home.

Reach reporter Jon Walker at 331-2206 or 800-530-6397.