By QUINTON SMITH/YachatsNews
Christine Fuller hugged the concrete shop floor as 29 rifle shots from a special weapons and tactics team tore through the plywood building adjacent to East Five Rivers Road deep in the foothills of the Coast Range.
It was 5:35 a.m. Dec. 27 as three SWAT team members shot at Tyler Holloway, 26, after he stepped outside briefly and was startled by an officer announcing “State Police.” Holloway fired one shot from his handgun, according to a Lane County district attorney’s report, apparently thinking the shout had come from a neighbor who had killed his close friend inside the shop seven hours earlier.
Holloway was hit once in the chest. He managed to get back inside the shop and died near a wood stove in the arms of his girlfriend, Amy Jewett.
“I was trying to get as close to the ground as I could,” Fuller told YachatsNews this week as she and Jewett recounted the deaths and chaos that started during a night of playing pool and darts. “The bullets kept thudding into the chair above me. I thought was going to die.”
Attorneys for Holloway’s mother, Rhonda Proctor of Vermont, filed notices with Oregon State Police, Lane County and the city of Springfield this week that she intends to sue them for excessive force, wrongful death and negligence and seek economic and punitive damages.
Dozens of officers from a half dozen agencies were searching that December night for Everett Fuller, who is accused of killing Chris “Bubba” Clark Jr. hours after he burst into the shop and shot him twice.
The women told YachatsNews that Everett Fuller – jealous and in a fit of rage — also fired shots around the room, missing the three of them before fending off Holloway and running away.
Christine Fuller and Jewett said they did not know where Everett Fuller went, but feared he would go to his house nearby for more ammunition and return to kill them. The Fullers are married with two sons, but lived in separate houses on the Prindel Creek Farm property and planned to divorce after 2½ years of separation, Christine Fuller said.
The legal notice sent Tuesday contends that police knew that Holloway, Jewett and Christine Fuller were inside the shop waiting for help. Instead of approaching the shop with armored or SWAT vehicles on two wide gravel driveways, a SWAT commander organized two teams of officers on foot to quietly surround it.
The notices contend that police knew Holloway was not a suspect in Clark’s killing, had communicated with Clark’s father who lived nearby and another neighbor all night about the three inside the shop, and did not use two large driveways to have armored or SWAT vehicles approach the building and use their loudspeakers to call them out. Instead, the notices claimed, police used a “blatantly unsound tactical decision to advance covertly on foot rather than announcing their presence from a position of safety.”
“This reckless tactical choice is contrary to standard protocol and needlessly placed both the officers and the victims at risk of harm, escalating a call for help into a tragic and entirely preventable deadly encounter,” the notice said.
In a seven-page report released Feb. 21 on the officer-involved shooting, Lane County District Attorney Christopher Parosa said after-action police reports indicated that two armored SWAT vehicles were too heavy to cross a small bridge to approach the shop where police could have used loudspeakers to call out the three inside.
But attorney Kevin Yolken said — and a visit to the shop clearly shows – that the shop is easily accessible from East Five Rivers Road by two large, gravel driveways and that the bridge is 100 yards away in a different direction.
“The bridge doesn’t come into play at all,” Yolken told YachatsNews during a tour of the area Tuesday. “There was clear access.”
“Despite claims otherwise, law enforcement knew vehicles could safely access the location where Tyler and the two women awaited help, yet they still chose to approach covertly and on foot,” Yolken said in a statement.
DA’s February ruling
In his February report, the district attorney said it was not his responsibility to question police tactics that night, but whether the actions of two state police troopers and a Lane County Sheriff’s deputy who shot at Holloway “bear criminal responsibility for the killing of Tyler Holloway.”
“Under the circumstances of this case, they do not,” Parosa wrote.
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.”
The district attorney’s report said that while the three officers 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. “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.”
Yolken, Jewett, Christine Fuller and Dannie Jones, the neighbor who was in communication with police that night, vigorously dispute that characterization.
“I understand there’s a person on the loose,” Yolken said. “I can’t fault the police to be cautious and take the risk seriously.”
But it was a critical mistake to not approach the shop in an armored vehicle “and announce themselves,” he said.
Dinner, darts and deaths
Holloway came to the Oregon coast in 2021 following a three-year enlistment in the Army, Yolken said, where he was a mechanic and deployed once to Korea.
Holloway worked as a commercial fisherman for a season, went home to Vermont to attend welding school and then returned to the farm near the end of 2023. He and Clark became close friends, working on farms in the remote valley, cutting firewood, and using their mechanic and welding skills for people in the area.
“He was just a really great kid,” Yolken said. “Likeable and kind.”
Christine Fuller, who has lived at the farm for 23 years, stays in Waldport four days a week when she works in Yachats and Seal Rock restaurants. She offered Holloway a room in her home and was the girlfriend of Clark, who lived elsewhere on the property. Jewett also lived on the farm and was Holloway’s girlfriend.
The shop was a central location and hangout for people in the homes scattered about the 120-acre farm. It had a woodstove, chairs, pool table, dart board and lots of tools and equipment scattered around.
“… the guys were always working on something here,” said Jewett.
The night of Dec. 26, Clark used the woodstove to cook dinner for the four of them before playing pool and darts.
Then, Jewett and Christine Fuller say “Everett came in and within minutes he shot Bubba” while sitting in a chair on a small loft in a corner of the shop. He fired 4-5 more shots around the room, Christine Fuller said, but did not hit anyone.
Christine Fuller said she and Holloway tackled Everett Fuller as he came down the loft stairs. Holloway punched Fuller, who hit Holloway in the head with the empty gun and ran off “and we never saw him the rest of the night,” she said.
While the two women stayed at the shop, Holloway raced to Jones’ nearby home to call 9-1-1, then to Christine Fuller’s house to call on a landline. Holloway returned to the shop to get Jewett’s car and with the women drove to Clark’s father’s house five miles away to tell him of his son’s death. Clark’s father and the three survivors returned to the shop so Clark could see his son.
It was 12:30 a.m., Yolken said, when the father tried to return home.
Driving down Five Rivers Road, Yolken said Clark stopped at a police command post one mile from the farm, told them he had just left the shop where his son’s body lay, and offered to escort officers to the shop.
Yolken said police declined and told Clark to leave. Yolken said a Benton County Sheriff’s deputy detained Clark and later put him in another police vehicle where he was handcuffed and showed an officer the farm’s layout.
Meanwhile, Holloway, Jewett and Christine Fuller were in the shop with Clark’s body waiting for police.
A covert approach
Because of the report of a killing and the remoteness of the area, deputies from Lane, Lincoln and Benton counties, Oregon State Police, and Eugene and Springfield police responded. It wasn’t until 3:40 a.m. that state police and Lane County Sheriff’s SWAT team members arrived and OSP Sgt. Jamin VanMeter began to develop a plan to approach the shop, according to the district attorney’s report.
Because the two armored vehicles were still more than an hour away and police said the bridge near the shop might not support them, the DA’s report said VanMeter “approved a covert approach to the property” because Fuller might still be at the farm and shoot at police.
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.
Yolken said Jones – who was back at his house — received a cell phone call from state police at 5:08 a.m. asking if Everett Fuller was in the shop. Jones told YachatsNews on Tuesday that he told them Everett Fuller was not, but that Holloway was in the building with two women and that Holloway had a gun.
“All they had to do was turn their lights on and turn on the sirens,” Jones said. “They did not.”
Three SWAT team members were behind trees 25 yards to the east of the shop. Holloway came out at 5:35 a.m. to fill a water bottle and had a gun in his right hand.
At that point, the DA’s report said, a member of the second SWAT team “announced ‘State Police’ ” and asked Holloway to step forward.
That’s when Holloway, the DA’s report said, “stopped, seemingly startled” turned towards a trooper, yelled and fired a shot in his direction. Three SWAT team members returned fire 29 times, the report said, hitting Holloway once.
The rifle bullets tore through both walls the plywood shop, hitting objects inside – including a fire extinguisher that released its chemicals – but missing the two women.
The district attorney wrote that after reviewing all the police reports, he believed that Holloway thought the man outside yelling at him was Everett Fuller.
Jewett, who was standing in the doorway as Holloway went outside, said she did not hear police announce themselves. “I don’t think they said it,” she said Tuesday.
Christine Fuller said she also believed – mistakenly at the time – that the barrage of police bullets came from Fuller, who had returned to kill them.
“I couldn’t imagine the police were shooting at us,” Christine Fuller said. “I thought it was Everett coming back to kill us.”
Both women were eventually detained after Christine Fuller was shot at with a less-lethal round as she stepped outside the shop door. Jewett said police ignored her pleas to go inside to see they could save Holloway.
Instead, once the women were put in the back of police vehicles, the SWAT team flew a drone inside the shop – and spotted the bodies of Holloway and Clark.
Jewett and Christine Fuller said they were kept in separate police vehicles until 2 o’clock that afternoon and released when Lane County officials said Everett Fuller drove overnight to Eugene, hired an attorney and surrendered at the sheriff’s office. He has been charged with second-degree murder.
The Oregonian/OregonLive reported that VanMeter, the supervisor of the SWAT response, was involved in a similar controversial fatal shooting by SWAT members of an 18-year-old man on rural property near Yachats in 2012 that included a covert, walk-up approach in a wooded area.
Body cameras off
Another issue with the police response, Yolken said, is that two of the three officers who fired at Holloway had not turned on their body cameras. Parosa told YachatsNews last month that the third officer forgot to wear his after changing into his SWAT uniform. One of the officers turned on his camera after the shooting, the district attorney’s report said.
The only body camera that recorded the shooting was on another state police trooper several hundred feet away from the officers who fired at Holloway, the district attorney said in his report.
“The video does not capture any exchanged communications, but you clearly hear one shot followed a couple of seconds later by numerous gunshots,” the district attorney wrote. But in his February report, Parosa said he does not believe Holloway would have knowingly fired a gun at police that he had called for help. “This case is a tragedy for all involved,” the district attorney wrote.
But there is no good, recorded evidence of the encounter.
“These young people called 9-1-1 for help,” Yolken said in a statement. “Instead, they were met six hours later with a tactical assault.”
- Quinton Smith is the editor of YachatsNews.com and can be reached at YachatsNews@gmail.com
To read the tort claim notice in the death of Tyler Holloway, go here
What a colossal cluster xxx. *Anyone*can shout “state police” in the dark. No lights? Sirens? The police *knew* there were innocents on property, why not definitively let them know that *actual* police were there to “protect and serve” by flashing some lights and hitting a siren for a couple seconds? They screwed that mission up royally. I hope the mother’s suit is just the first of many.
Simply unbelievable. The intelligence displayed by the Keystone Krew assigned to this”rescue” and the lack of it by personnel who put this “sure to fail” plan into action is pure … I cannot come up with a word that best exemplifies my feelings. I sincerely hope that all judgements favor the Holloway family and loved ones and all monies received are taken from the offending agency’s coffers rather than taxpayers back pockets.
This whole incident seem like a mismanaged “Curley, Moe and Larry” act. If not criminally responsible they are certainly negligent. Especially when the father of the deceased told them what was going on and offered to take them in. So many other things the police could have done. I support the police but not in cases like this.