Off-road outing leads to shooting

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April 07, 2009

By Anita Burke

Mail Tribune

Nearly every Sunday a group of friends from Gold Hill and Rogue River set off to do some four-wheeling in the forest. But this week their drive in the Tennessee Mountain area of Josephine County ended in gunfire.

Now one man, Gregory Glen Graybill, 53, of the 5300 block of Left Fork of Sardine Creek Road, likely will lose his arm after taking a blast from a 12-gauge shotgun wielded by a miner who lived on a claim along a forest road where the group was riding outside Kerby, friends said.

The miner, 61-year-old Ronald Eugene Spears, is lodged in the Josephine County Jail on a first-degree assault charge.

"He changed somebody's life forever," said Eric Olson, 54, of Gold Hill.

Olson and Graybill were riding together in Olson's Jeep, the third vehicle in a caravan of six trucks on a rugged gravel road about two miles west of Highway 199.

"It was the first time I'd been out there," Olson said. "It was across Josephine Creek then up a ridge and a mile or so in. It was rugged but it wasn't that far in."

Olson said the group, which included drivers and passengers ranging in age from 5 to nearly 80, suddenly came upon a camp with two tents and what they thought was an abandoned white International truck parked on the roadway. They planned to head down a ravine, then back up a ridge to a main forest road, he said.

Two small Suzuki Samurai leading the group scooted past the truck, but Olson slowed to make sure his wider Jeep could squeeze by. Olson said the man police later identified as Spears appeared out of the brush, shouting at them to get off his property, which he described as an 80-acre mining claim he had lived on for 22 years.

"He said we would collapse his tunnels," Olson said.

The miner, who had grabbed a shotgun out of one of the tents, shouted in the Jeep's window, telling Olson to turn back.

Olson said Monday that he told the man he would get off his property but he wouldn't leave his friends behind. He wanted to follow them across the land and didn't want to disturb the claim, he said.

"We're not kids creating havoc," Olson said. "We're just guys and families who like being out in the woods. It's almost like church for us out in nature."

The miner left and Graybill got out of the Jeep to scout ahead on foot, checking out the terrain and tracking down the first two vehicles, which were waiting in the ravine.

Olson said he couldn't see what happened next, but his friends said the miner approached the other vehicles and Graybill, challenging them. Graybill, a carpenter who had done some mining, argued that federal law doesn't enable miners to claim forestland as private property and that the four-wheelers had a legal right to cross the land, Olson said.

Olson said that the two others standing with Graybill said Spears put the gun against Graybill's chest and said he would shoot him.

"Greg pushed the gun away and turned sideways just as he fired," Olson said. "If he hadn't done that, we would have hauled a corpse out of there.

"Two inches in and it would have gutted him."

The group got Graybill, who was bleeding badly, into one of the rigs and raced to the Illinois Valley Fire Department in Selma. Crews there summoned the Josephine County Sheriff's Department at about 12:40 p.m. Sunday.

Graybill was airlifted to Rogue Valley Medical Center, where he underwent three and a half hours of vascular surgery, Olson said.

His friends waited in Selma for hours while investigators worked to gather details. Deputies closed the forest roads in the Tennessee Mountain area where the shooting happened. Spears was arrested later Sunday and bail was set at $50,000 as of Monday.

Olson said Graybill has massive muscle, bone and nerve damage to his arm. He was transferred to Legacy Emmanuel Hospital Monday afternoon for evaluation by specialized surgeons, but if the prospects for saving his arm don't look good, he'll be transferred again to a Veterans Affairs hospital for amputation.

"We're hoping for the best," Olson said.

However, Olson's already planning to give Graybill a Ford Powerstoke automatic truck he can drive with one hand and hopes to plan benefit concerts or other events to help out the carpenter who will have a lot of healing to do, all the while lacking insurance and likely being unable to work.

Graybill's partner, Karren Claassen, said she was stunned when friends called to tell her of the shooting.

"When they said shot, I just couldn't believe it," she said. "I still can't."

Law-enforcement officials said this sort of shooting was rare here although forest officials said miners have been involved in clashes across the West.

Forest Service spokeswoman Patty Burel said she couldn't discuss the specifics of this case while the investigation was ongoing. She said that generally, miners can remove valuable minerals from the land where they have a mineral rights claim, but their other rights are limited. Off-road vehicle use is allowed as long as drivers obey any posted rules and don't damage resources.

The sheriff's department is continuing its investigation. Anyone with information can call the department's tip line at 474-5160 or the major crime unit at 474-5153.

Reach reporter Anita Burke at 776-4485, or e-mail aburke@mailtribune.com.

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