- Correction: An earlier version of this story used a photo of an Army National Guard member from Wyoming also named Tyler Holloway, but who is not the man killed Dec. 27, 2024. YachatsNews regrets the error.
- Editor’s note: This story was updated Tuesday, Feb. 25 with comments and details from Lane County district attorney Christopher Parosa.
By QUINTON SMITH/YachatsNews
A 26-year-old man killed by police on a remote Five Rivers farm during a December manhunt shot at an Oregon State Police trooper after mistakenly thinking the officer was the man who had killed his friend hours earlier.
That’s the conclusion of Lane County District Attorney Christopher Parosa after a two-month investigation by the county’s Inter-Agency Deadly Force Investigation Team.
Tyler Holloway, an Army veteran who had been honorably discharged in 2023, was living at Prindel Creek Farm in the Five Rivers community when a night of chaos and death erupted late on Dec. 26. Seven hours later he was killed by a single bullet out of 29 fired by three officers.
The district attorney’s seven-page report released late Friday afternoon said Holloway called 9-1-1 at 10:57 p.m. Dec. 26 to say that Everett S. Fuller, 55, had shot and killed their friend, Chris “Bubba” Clark Jr. while the he, Clark and two women were playing darts and listening to music in a large shop on the 120-acre property that lays in Lane County just a few miles south of Lincoln County line.
Holloway was hit once in the chest after he fired a handgun toward a trooper – apparently mistaking the officer for Fuller, the suspected killer.
The district attorney said it was not his responsibility to question police tactics that night which stretched over hours and involved at least six agencies, but whether the actions of two state police troopers and a Lane County Sheriff’s deputy “bear criminal responsibility for the killing of Tyler Holloway.”
“Under the circumstances of this case, they do not,” Parosa said.
At the end of the long, detailed report, the district attorney concluded that Holloway was startled by the trooper’s attempt to identify himself from the cover of trees 25-30 yards from the shop during a heavy rainstorm that obscured most sounds.
“I find no evidence in this investigation to support the notion that Tyler Holloway would have knowingly fired a gun at law enforcement officers that he called to the scene for assistance,” Parosa wrote. “This case is a tragedy for all involved.”
Parosa’s report had to rely on police reports, witness statements and ballistics tests because body cameras of two of the three officers who shot at Holloway were turned off. The third officer was not wearing a camera.
Lots of issues
After Holloway’s 9-1-1 call, it took two hours for officers from Lane, Lincoln and Benton counties, Oregon State Police, and Eugene and Springfield police to reach the farm near the end of East Five Rivers Road. It wasn’t until 4:30 a.m. the next day that state police and Lane County Sheriff’s SWAT team members arrived in armored vehicles.
But the police response was troublesome from the start. In his report, the district attorney said:
- A heavy winter storm had knocked down trees and prevented easier and quicker police response to the property deep in the foothills of the Coast Range;
- There were numerous homes and outbuildings spread out across the large farm and police were not sure of the shop’s location where Clark was killed and if Fuller was still on the farm or had fled;
- The first responding officers set up a command area one mile from the farm, and soon decided they needed a special response team because of the dense wooded area, numerous buildings, and not knowing Fuller’s whereabouts;
- Because of the remoteness of the farm and surrounding hills, communication was spotty at best with little to no radio or cell phone communication “frustrating responding officers’ ability to communicate with dispatch and coordinate resources sent to the scene”;
- Officers tried to use drones to understand the property’s layout, locate the shop and to spot people on the property and moving around the shop, but had to fly drones so high they were not effective;
- Deputies were able to talk to another resident on the property referred to as “Dan” who was not involved in the shooting. Dan provided some information about Holloway and the two women, including that he had been to the shop where Holloway and the women were waiting with Clark’s body for police. But the report said Dan could not call Holloway or the women because his house was “some distance from the shop and there was extremely limited cellular service in the area.”
- The two SWAT vehicles were too heavy to cross a small bridge to approach the shop, plus they were blocked from reaching the farm because of a cluster of vehicles on the one-lane road at the command post. If one of the vehicles had been able to reach the shop, it could have used its loudspeaker system to get Holloway and the women to come out, an outside expert told YachatsNews.
The district attorney also said that of two of the three officers who fired at Holloway were equipped with body cameras, but that neither camera was turned on. The camera of OSP Senior Trooper Brandon RatheLeGurche was turned on “well after” the shooting, the district attorney’s report said.
The only body camera that recorded the shooting was on Senior Trooper Wyatt Merritt, who was several hundred feet away from the three officers who shot at Holloway.
“The video does not capture any exchanged communications, but you clearly hear one shot followed a couple of seconds later by numerous gunshots,” Parosa wrote.
In all, the officers who fired their rifles at Holloway 29 times, hitting Holloway once in the chest, according to the district attorney’s report. Parosa told YachatsNews on Monday that Holloway’s wound was “through and through” and that ballistics and DNA tests from bullets recovered from nearby walls were unable to determine which officer’s shot hit him.
SWAT’s tactical response
It was 3:40 a.m. Dec. 27 when state police Sgt. Jamin VanMeter arrived with the agency’s SWAT team and began to develop a plan to approach the shop, the report said.
Because the two armored vehicles were still more than an hour away and the bridge near the shop might not support them, the report said VanMeter “approved a covert approach to the property” because Fuller might still be at the farm and “could provoke further violence against law enforcement.”
The plan was for a seven-member SWAT team to establish a perimeter around the shop with a second team a bit farther back to either help extract or detain Holloway and the women or help if Fuller “were to engage in a gunfight with SWAT members,” the report said.
The two teams approached the property about 4:30 a.m.
“As the insert team approached the property, they observed a person get into a vehicle at the shop and drive across the bridge toward a residence some distance away,” the district attorney’s report said. “Once the vehicle was gone, the insert team continued to the shop moving in three separate teams to locations around the structure.”
While it was not clear who drove away from the shop, the report said VanMeter worried that it may have been Fuller. But the report did not indicate that police pursued the vehicle and the person driving it. Only later, Parosa said Monday, did investigators determine that it was like the neighbor “Dan” who was leaving.
When they reached the perimeter of the shop, three troopers radioed concerns that the bridge would not bear the weight of the SWAT vehicles. That no longer mattered, the district attorney’s report said, because the SWAT vehicles “were unable to navigate around the numerous law enforcement vehicles that were blocking travel on East Five Rivers Road.”
The report said it was 5:35 a.m. when OSP Senior Trooper Dan Merritt, a member of the second SWAT team, saw a man who did not match Fuller’s description leave the shop “carrying items in both hands, including an object that appeared to be a handgun.” Parosa said Merritt was 25-30 yards away.
At that point, the report said, Dan Merritt “announced ‘State Police’ and commanded the individual come to their location.”
That’s when Holloway, the report said, “stopped, seemingly startled” turned towards Dan Merritt, yelled and fired a shot in Merritt’s direction. Merritt, RatheLeGurche and Lane County Sheriff’s Deputy Taylor Trimboli returned fire, the report said, hitting Holloway once but also hitting a propane tank that “clouded the area with gas.”
Right before he was shot, the district attorney’s report said, the two women inside the shop heard Holloway direct a profanity to someone outside. Parosa said “under the totality of the circumstances” Parosa believed that Holloway thought the man outside yelling at him was Fuller.
Holloway was able to get back into the shop where he was later found dead. The two women eventually came out of the shop, were detained by police and interviewed by detectives.
The report said that during initial interviews both women were under the impression that Fuller had returned to the shop “just prior to police arrival and killed Tyler Holloway.”
In fact, Parosa told YachatsNews on Monday, investigators were later able to determine that Fuller fled the farm before police arrived. Fuller made his way to Eugene where he retained an attorney and surrendered to deputies late on Dec. 27. He is in the Lane County jail on a charge of second-degree murder.
“The women also expressed repeated frustrations that law enforcement took more than five hours to respond to their initial calls for assistance,” the report said.
But Parosa also added an odd twist to the movements of Holloway and the women that night. After Fuller allegedly shot Clark, all three went to a house on the property where Holloway called 9-1-1, Parosa said. They then went to the house of Clark’s father, who lives several miles north of Prindel Creek Farm on Five Rivers Road, informed him of his son’s death and then all returned to the shop, the district attorney said.
Parosa said also expects it to be months before the state crime lab can complete toxicology tests on the two dead men, but that any determination of what — if anything — might be in their system was not germane to his conclusions.
Not criminal homicide
In his report, the district attorney said Holloway’s death did not constitute criminal homicide under Oregon law because the three officers “had the legal justification of self-defense and defense of others.”
“In the manner in which this event unfolded, with immediate gunfire upon law enforcement initiated by Holloway, there was no window of opportunity for de-escalation … that would have also protected the life and safety of the officers that were being fired upon,” Parosa wrote.
The district attorney’s report said that while Merritt did not believe Holloway was the original killer “none of the involved officers knew who Mr. Holloway was or the role he played in the alleged crime that occurred.”
“More important to the criminal analysis, at the point Tyler Holloway turned and fired his pistol in Senior Trooper (Daniel) Merritt’s direction, likely assuming it was the at-large assailant, he inadvertently created a mortal threat to the life of Senior Trooper Merritt and the other officers on scene,” Parosa wrote. “Senior Trooper Merritt, Senior Trooper RatheLeGurche, and Deputy Trimboli each perceived a reasonable threat to Merritt’s life. Had they failed to react immediately, whether to provide verbal warnings or engage in de-escalation tactics, they faced the unjustifiable risk of Mr. Holloway firing additional rounds at Trooper Merritt or other officers. Consequently, each officer was legally justified in self-defense or defense of other.”
Parosa said he contacted Holloway’s mother, who lives in Vermont, three times during the investigation, including the morning it was released. Holloway’s mother has retained an attorney in Eugene.
- Quinton Smith is the editor of YachatsNews.com and can be reached at YachatsNews@gmail.com
So what is the point of officers wearing cameras if they are not turned on? Especially in a case like this.
possibly the officers “in the treeline” without bodycams could have used a bullhorn to
announce their presence, something like: “Tyler! albeit we are seven hours late, we are here to help you. So, if you hear thrashing in the brush, don’t toss a random shot*; it’s not the murderer returning, it’s the swat team here to save you.”
*random shot returned by 29
The tragedy here is that officers didn’t even try to help the people who had called for help almost seven hours earlier. After multiple residents told them exactly where the people waiting for them were located, officers apparently found it more necessary to consider using their equipment designed for situations way more dangerous than a domestic disturbance. The results of their dithering and lack of common sense (identifying themselves sooner than six hours on site) was that a wonderful young man is dead.