Hooh boy, things might get ugly in WI

That makes for two murders two seasons in a row.

It also makes our task of convincing the public that gun owners are law-abiding a bit more difficult.

It's weird, though, that this was another murder that had to do with the Hmong community.

What's with that?

The man arrested was a felon. Gun laws really work don't they?

An interesting note, that may or may not have some bearing on this incident -- the victim was a man named Cha Vang. He apparently was part of the Hmong community in or around Green Bay, WI. The shooter in the previous incident two years ago was named Chai Vang, and was apparently from the Eastern MN area, hunting in western WI. It'll be real interesting hearing the whole story, and from what I can see there's a lot more than what's been released so far.

no bearing

vang = smith

Nichols was shot, too.

Anybody else catch that? I'm not going to stick up for the guy, if he shot and tried to hide the body, there's obviously foul play. However, we do need to look at what exactly happened. I'm going to reserve judgement on this one until there are more details out from the cops.

Maybe it's not a gun problem. Maybe it's a "diversity problem"..

Diversity problem? *** doest that mean? Asians cant live with whites or what?

It's not a diversity problem and it's not a gun problem.. it's a irresponsible people problem.

wow bad guys being ......bad..I'm shock...shock I tell you.

1911 guy

you make a good point it easy to lynch him. hiding could be because he was a felon with a gun wonder what kinda felony

What nation do Hmongs come from?

To over-simplify it - from the hills of Laos.

I suspect there are cultural factors that play in to this.

Make me a little cautious

I hunt / atv / camp regularly in MN, a few miles from the WI border. I'll have to say this bit of revenge killing (or whatever type of killing it is) concerns me a great deal. This concern is aggravated by the fact that some people grow cultivated MJ in the state forests (I found and reported such a plot 2 years ago) ... seems like I'm watching my back more than ever in the woods these days ... kinda sad.

IIRC the larger and more sensational Hmong shooting from last year was preceded by the suspicious death/disappearance of a a local white hunter. I seem to remember some talk of that incident contributing to the difficult climate which led to the mass shooting.

Someone mentioned that "Nichols was shot too" -- this isn't really right. Nichols was apparently the ONLY one that got shot. As more info comes out, it appears from the following story that Vang wasn't shot after all:

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/storie...IOL-?SITE=WIFON&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

There's more to this story that we don't know, and it'll be out in the next week or so, from what I understand. It's amazing how little we actually get in factual information from the press -- it's really only the details that support whatever position or point of view is being presented. The article above contains the story from Nichols' girlfriend/fiancee. If she can be believed, and if that's all of the story, it's quite different that some of the preliminary conclusions. It does sound possible, but I have doubts about some parts of both stories (the fiancee's and the Vang family/friends). For instance, if Vang spoke little or no English, how did a verbal altercation transpire? Also, if both guys were gentle and respectful and would never hurt anyone, how did one end up shot and the other sliced and diced? I don't think we have the whole story, and it looks like it's going to come out in dribbles rather than torrents. We'll see, I guess.

I do know this -- Sheriff Kanikula's department will get to the bottom of it. It'll be interesting to see how long it takes.

I suspect there are cultural factors that play in to this.

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In other news, I have a creeping suspicion that water is wet, the sky appears blue, the sun will rise tomorrow and maybe.. just maybe a bears are often found to poop in the woods.

~GnSx

vang = smith

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Most Americans don't relize that the diversity of our last names comes from the extreme diversity of our culture
There was a time that I could tell you what part of a SE Asian country someone came form by their last name.
But Asian minority communities are extremely tight knit it would not sutprise me if the the Hmong at least knew of each other proir to the unpleasantness

f Vang spoke little or no English, how did a verbal altercation transpire?

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You wuld be surprised. I have been in verbal altercations with young men in Vinh Long that spoke no English while I spoke no Vietnamese and we understood each other perfectly.

So he stabbed the other guy to death. He claims self defense. Why did he try to hide the body and not tell anybody?

Lor pointed his gun at the man's legs and made him state that Lor was not a liar, the complaint said. Once the man did so, Lor allegedly made him walk backward to his house.

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How could you blow that out of proportion

Joab said:

How could you blow that out of proportion?

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LOL! I'm with you -- if someone did that to me, on my posted land, they'd be looking at a wall of lead just as soon as I got my butt behind some cover. The state would have to try his tattered *ss in absentia, because they'd never find a body. I'm a deacon in the Church of Shoot, Shovel, and Shut Up.

As for the recent incident, several of the questions above seem perfectly valid to me. I cannot believe that a guy who's minding his own business and supposedly attacked with a rifle would not respond with the greatest-threat weapon he had, which in this case was a shotgun. I also can't understand how someone with a rifle, already in a verbal (or body-language) altercation, who had decided to fire their weapon wouldn't be trying for a center mass shot. If the incident truly happened like Nichols' girlfriend says, what are the odds that Nichols' wounds would be to the hands? That doesn't make sense.

What I can imagine, though, is someone who was in a verbal altercation, with a rifle pointed in a safe direction or even at their antagonist, might get a shot or multiple shots into someone's hands if their rifle's barrel had been grabbed. A key question will be the location of the shotgun when the physical altercation started. Was it in Nichols' hands? Was Nichols disarmed first? Did he put his gun down for some reason first? I have to believe that if he had put down the shotgun, either voluntarily or under threat, his story would have included that detail (and it fully might -- the press is notorious for losing key details in their half-*ssed retelling of events). If Nichols did receive his wounds in a defensive fashion and then kill Vang with a knife during the struggle, why wouldn't that be his story?

Let's consider two hypotheticals. First: Nichols and Vang meet and find themselves in a confrontation. Vang waves the gun in Nichols' direction, Nichols grabs the muzzle, either dropping or having been caught without his shotgun. The gun fires, leaving defensive wounds on Nichols' hands. Nichols gets out his knife and kills Vang.

Hypothetical scenario two: Nichols' fiancee's story is that he was positioned as a non-threat, in a discussion with Vang, when Vang opens fire with two rounds, each of which causes a superficial wound to a separate hand. Nichols then managed to retrieve his knife and neutralize the threat without getting shot again.

The only way to tell if either one of those scenarios is even close to what happened is to read the evidence that's available. Even then, it'll be extremely difficult to tell who is at fault. It would be very fortuitous if the evidence is enough to answer that question as well.

There are a million questions that haven't been answered, among them: was the .22 a semi-auto, or some other action (bolt/pump/lever, etc)? Are there powder and/or contact wounds on Nichols' hands? Was Vang stabbed, slashed, beaten to death with the knife handle, or some combination of the three? Vang's hunting party reported (in the 911 call) hearing a shotgun blast and multiple rifle shots -- did Nichols fire his shotgun, either as a warning/threat or in an attempted assault? Where were Vang's wounds? Did either participant have any other related wounds as a result of the altercation, and if so, what are their nature (defensive, etc)? What do the footprints, if any, lead one to conclude? Who originally approached whom? Several of these might possibly be answered with evidence, some may not or may not be conclusively provable.

As for why Nichols would conceal the body and leave the scene, and not report the incident to authorities, he's a convicted felon. To tell the story would mean admitting to two additional felonies -- being a felon in possession of a firearm, and obtaining a hunting license under false pretenses that are felony-related. For all the talk of how good and non-violent he was, there's an apparent blind spot where his burglary conviction is concerned, and most of the felons I've run across have a definite aversion to liberty-curtailing activities. I'm sure once the gunshot wounds started hurting enough, the hospital started looking like a more attractive alternative. Most burglaries are never solved. The burglars that get caught are seldom the bright ones. A brighter criminal might have figured out that if he'd bellied up to the bar and admitted to having killed someone in self-defense while illegally hunting, he might be looking at a better outcome than having been caught after concealing a questionable homicide. He could have at least then framed the story favorably to himself.

No matter which way the evidence points, there's likely to be a spirited discussion in court as to who was the instigator of this thing. I have to say, though, that going only by the limited information that's being offered in the press, Nichols' story sounds like that of a guy who's trying to make his story fit what he knows of the crime, no matter how illogical it might sound. Kinda like the unsubstantiated and unprovable claims the OJ Dream Team came up with during that trial -- they can be outlandish, as long as they can't be directly refuted and have the propensity to allow motivated jurors to see them as "reasonable doubt". It doesn't take long for defense attorneys to catch on that the racial predispositions of jurors, especially in emotionally-charged circumstances like those of this case and the precedent-setting events of the previous cases, can be exploited pretty easily.

Clearly three cases are not sufficient grounds upon which to draw a conclusion, but given the coverage in the press of Vang I, Vang II, and the Lor case it would be easy to reach a careless conclusion that Hmongs tend to hunt illegally on other people's private land, and to shoot first when challenged on it. The former has been well-documented. The latter is a likely conclusion to reach for one that regularly reads the newspaper.

Thoughts?

?

Assistant District Attorney Melinda Tempelis noted at Thursday's hearing that Lor has no prior criminal record. She said the victim and the victim's family felt the deferred prosecution agreement was appropriate.


seems the victim in this story didn't come from the " wall of hot lead school"


"It is a blessing from God to be living in this country and to receive this fair (treatment)," he said" bet the judge doesn't hear that very often

I would like to hear the full results of the final investigation. We don't know quite enough yet.

But from the other two incidents mentioned, it seems like some people don't want to back down from a confrontation while armed. That is a recipe for bloodshed.

I would also like to know how that one property owner had his land boundary marked.
Either way, if I found someone armed and hunting on my property, I would be pretty irate and would likely call the game warden before even confronting the person.