Unanswered questions about the death of the Teenager of Wind River drives tension and grief

By Andrew Graham, Wyofile

When the sun went through the Wind River Reserve on Friday evening, more than 75 people gathered in Fort Washakie to remember Stephanie Beartail, a high school senior who died on March 4 under suspicable circumstances.

Laughing and tears mingled with spoken memories of Bearstail, whose friends and family knew her as funny, friendly and as a passionate athlete who wanted to study medicine.

“It was rare to meet a person who did not like Steph or did not like to be near her,” said a friend about her lost classmates in testimonials who were read out loud, but whose authors were not mentioned. “It doesn't go by if I don't think of her.”

Three days earlier, in a courtroom in Fremont County, a lawyer of Bearstail informed a judge that he missed judicial appointments for drug and alcohol tests because he could not get out of bed due to trauma and depression in connection with her death. It is a death that some in the reserve say that he knows more than he said in public. In a foreign exchange without official information, his lawyer said that her client had already been attacked in the form of awake.

The court hearing and the vigil show how the death of Bearstail continues to reverberate by a reservation community that is waiting for answers. An investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation went into the third month on Monday, a date that combined a national holiday for the epidemic of missing and murdered indigenous women. So far, the federal authority has not given any public answers.

The sparse information officers have publicly asked as many questions as they answered. After midnight on March 4, Bearstail left a moving vehicle along a rural reservation street, according to the Wyoming Highway Patrol. The patrol also reported that she was a passenger in the car and “supposedly jumped”, although the authorities did not explain how they acquired this information. She was intoxicated and, according to the Coroner of Fremont County Marijuana, had her system. Her friend brought her to the emergency room, and from there he was arrested and booked in the Wind River Tribal prison, but was only suspended in connection with the accident of a traffic debt, said his lawyer Wyofile this week.

The investigators are still working and, according to an FBI spokesman, “methodically and thoroughly address every element of the incident”.

At the custody of the candlelight, the participants carried signs with the request for “justice for Steph”, a rally cry, which, after the family of Bearstail, stated that they had reason to assume that violence played a role in their death.

In March, the parents of Bearstails Wyofile said that they had left their house in Fort Washakie to look for her daughter on the night when she died after she stayed past her outcome. “She needed help and we tried to find her,” said her mother. The family rejected it to exchange details out of concern that would affect the ongoing law enforcement examinations.

So far, there has been no official recognition of the possibility of violence in one way or another, since the FBI as well as the custom is closely delivered.

The forensic doctor came to the conclusion that Bearstail died of head injuries after her “output from a moving vehicle” and ruled the nature of her death as “vague”.

The “indefinite” judgment was made with the information on information that investigators were available at this time, Fremont County Coroner Erin Ivie told Wyofile on Monday. “If there were final evidence that pointed out to another death about another, this would have been ruled,” she said.

The forensic doctor's office examines the deaths independently. However, the classification in the case of bearstail could change in accidental or cozy default if the law enforcement provides the forensic doctor who shift the needle to one of these categories, said Ivie.

The friends and family of Bearstail fear that they will be another statistics in a long chain of unresolved deaths.

“We have a lot of questions that we have no answers to,” Aunt Allison Quir Warren from Bearstail told Wyofile in a telephone interview on Monday.

“With the small details we paint this picture and it's not a very good picture,” she said. “We don't know who was still there that night and what happened. We only know that she was with her boyfriend.”

An independent court presence

On April 30, Bearstail's friend appeared in a Jurisdiction of Fremont County for allegations that he had repeatedly violated the bond conditions under which he stood by Dui since his arrest at the end of last year. These conditions were a prerequisite for regularly reporting alcohol and drug tests – the dates that he had repeatedly missed.

Although the friend had previously been represented by a public defender, the private defender Cynthia van Vleet appeared in his name at the hearing on April 30.

Wyofile does not call the friend because he was not charged with the death of Bearstail for crimes. However, Wyofile reports on the friend of the friend's court appearance in the separate Dui case and the statements of his lawyer in order to include a case with little verifiable information despite the public.

Van Vleet informed the judge that her client had missed his necessary tests due to psychological health problems that came from the accident of March 4.

On March 5, one day after the death of Bearstail, he missed a court hearing in the DUI because he was still in the tribal prison, as court files. The only criminal offense that tribal authorities have accused him is to properly report an accident that, according to his lawyer, contains a fine of 50 US dollars as a punishment if he is convicted.

Bearstail died in the hospital after an hour -long struggle for her life, with her parents being present, her aunt Wyofile said.

Van Vleets's client is innocent and has “fully worked together,” said his lawyer with various law enforcement authorities, including the FBI. And she says people have hurried to assess him without evidence of his guilt. He “is crucified by the community without facts to support that this was a case of domestic violence, without evidence,” she said.

Van Vleet wrote in a court registration that requested that the friend of the friend change the friend's binding conditions to attend a facility for mental treatments outside the state, that her client was “currently in danger in the local community”. She then referred to an attack that she said was examined by the law enforcement authorities in the region.

“People take the law into their own hands,” said Vleet Vleet to Wyofile. Three people attacked their clients because he rumors that he was involved in the death of Bearstail, she said, and he was taken to the hospital with a broken skull.

The judge granted Vletet's application to change the bond conditions and at the same time warned her client that he had already cost his family considerable money for bond losses.

Nevertheless, his appearance in court and the attitude of Van Vleet showed: “They take this seriously and their people try to help them with the problems they are faced with,” said the judge.

Van Vleet announced Wyofile that there were difficult questions about how young people had access to alcohol in the reserve, and she added that there are people who are involved in the events of the night who do not work with the law enforcement authorities.

“There are people who don't talk, but it is not [her client]”, Said Van Vleet.” Young children in the reserve drink far too much. ”

The relatives of bearstail in positions in question. They heard about the attack on the friend, said their aunt Quimer Warren, but they think it could have been a non -related struggle.

And they wonder if Bearstail's friend has told the investigators the truth. If he had, said Quiver Warren, would have answered her family.

“Give us something, say something,” said Quiver Warren, “so that the family can heal and that Stephanie can have peace on the other.”

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This article was originally published by Wyofile and is published here again with permission. Wyofile is an independent non -profit news organization that focuses on Wyoming people, places and politics.

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