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Slaying Bridges Racial Divide
Whites, Indians are forced to come together to confront troubling questions

By Louis Sahagun
Times Staff Writer

February 26, 2005

BISHOP, Calif. — For generations, American Indians and whites largely kept
to themselves in this eastern Sierra hamlet, living side by side but not
together.

Now, the slaying of a white store clerk — and the death threats against
Indian girls that followed — has forced Indians and whites to come together
to ask some difficult questions: Did their way of life contribute to the
killing? Can more violence be prevented?

"People are realizing that what's really important is the safety of our
children," said Cal Stafford, chief of police on the Paiute-Shoshone
reservation. "That's an issue that has nothing to do with borders or legal
jurisdictions, and I think it's going to have a lasting effect on how folks
get along around here."

The drama unfolded on the north edge of town shortly after noon on Jan. 19,
when Wayne Bengochia, a 48-year-old Paiute-Shoshone, allegedly shot Meadow
Farms Liquor store clerk David Pettet six times in the head, chest and
stomach.

Bengochia, who was armed with a .22 semiautomatic rifle and more than 60
rounds of ammunition, continued firing randomly until his weapon jammed,
authorities said. According to witnesses, Bengochia then threw down his
rifle and passed out in a snow bank.

Bengochia is being held on $1 million bail in Inyo County Jail in
Independence, about 45 miles south of here. Authorities still aren't sure
about a motive in the killing of the Meadow Farms clerk of 18 years.

Four days after the shooting, an unsigned letter was discovered alongside a
road near the reservation day-care center. Written in red-ink print and
stapled to a cover sheet that said "KKK," the words were terrifying:

"Your half-witted bucks have taken another white. From now on, your
daughters will be targets. From the ages of five to nine years of age, they
will be taken from the reservation, raped and beaten to death, and
dismembered."

Gina Clarke, an employee at the Paiute Palace Casino, discovered the letter
and took it straight to the Inyo County Sheriff's Department.

"For law enforcement authorities, the ramifications were incredible," said
Inyo County Sheriff Dan Lucas. "We're dealing with two major issues: a
homicide, which is rare in these parts, and a terrorist threat, which has
us stretched pretty thin in a 10,000-square-mile county."

Other copies of the letter were found blowing around in the wind on a
reservation ball field and parking lot and were turned in to tribal Police
Chief Stafford.

Within hours, a quiet panic spread across the 1,400-member reservation and
the vast rural county. Inyo is normally peaceful country, lightly populated
with only 18,000 people.

Bishop, population 5,000, is known by Sierra-bound travelers as a stopping
place along U.S. 395. The town straddles the highway and lies in the
shadows of jagged snow-capped peaks.

Bishop residents worried that unknown hate-mongers among them were using
the shooting as an excuse to stir up trouble against the reservation. Some
feared retaliatory attacks by Indian vigilantes.

On the reservation, Native Americans fortified their homes and kept their
children home from school. Some children wrongly came to believe they had
been targeted by name in the letter. Hundreds of Latino renters on the
reservation feared their children might be mistaken for American Indians.

Worried parents followed school buses in family cars or walked home with
students. Others, armed with chain saws and clippers, cleared forest paths
of vegetation that could be used as hiding places for snipers.

"The threat went far beyond any implied or explicit racism that some people
may have experienced here in the past," said Bill Michael, director of the
Eastern California Museum in Independence. "It was in a whole different
league, and no one would tolerate it."

In an effort to stave off potentially dangerous misunderstandings, Paiute
Tribal Council Vice Chair Sandra Warlie initiated emotional news
conferences and town hall meetings to dispel rumors and urge calm.

"Rumors were flying faster than truth," Warlie said. "I wanted to stop
that."

One meeting drew more than 600 people and was highlighted by calls for
peace and unity by Pettet's children and Bengochia's relatives. It closed
with an ancient Paiute tradition: An Indian rug was spread on the ground to
receive contributions for the family of the deceased.

"That blanket filled up pretty fast," recalled Cindy Cox, a liaison between
the reservation and the county. "It was a time of coming together."

More meetings are planned to reinforce new bridges of cooperation between
communities.

"Any time you have different cultures together, there is always a potential
for disagreement," said Ginnie Traver, who co-owns a Bishop bookstore. "In
this case, there was a potential for something real bad to happen, for
calmer heads not to prevail. So far, they have."

But fears linger. The FBI has joined local authorities in an investigation.
Extra patrol cars cruise Bishop and the reservation's main roads: Tu Su, Pa
Ha, See Vee and Diaz lanes.

On and off the reservation, people are wondering whether the homicide could
have been avoided had the communities paid more attention to mutual
concerns, such as alcoholism, drug abuse and treatment for the mentally
unstable.

Police say Bengochia was legally intoxicated at the time of the slaying. In
recent months, he had been barred from entering the tribal gas station and
fast food mart, as well as Meadow Farms Liquor, because of disruptive
behavior. Authorities said evidence indicates that he had been firing his
rifle near his home on the reservation just weeks before the killing.

"Bishop is full of racism," said Laura Joost-Kuhn, former pastor at
Bishop's Valley Presbyterian Church. "On the other hand, alcoholism and
drug abuse are rampant on the reservation."

"Do we give a darn about the mentally ill around here?" she asked
rhetorically, shaking her head. "What about racism?"

The last month has brought those questions into sharp focus.

Some Native Americans here do not believe more social services are the
answer. The challenge, they say, remains the complexity of reservation life
and the historic communication gap between Indian and non-Indian
communities.

Some traditional Native American families, for example, are reluctant to
bring their problems to non-Indians, or even reservation clinics. Then,
too, county law enforcement authorities tend to tread lightly on the
reservation, for fear of triggering a cultural backlash.

The situation presents a particularly daunting mission for Inyo County
Sheriff's investigator Dennis Bacoch, who is himself a Paiute-Shoshone and
in charge of the effort to find the letter writer.

"The homicide is an open-and-shut case," Bacoch said. "But we have no new
leads on the letters, or fingerprints. And I'm still waiting on my
psychological profile of the letter writer from the FBI."

The tribe has offered a $2,000 reward for information leading to the arrest
and conviction of the letter's author, who could face state charges of
making a terrorist threat. It also is seeking donations to pay tribal
police officers who have been working double and triple shifts since the
shooting.

It was also a time of taking stock and mending cultural fences. The modern
history of the Paiute-Shoshone is mostly told through economic hardship and
exploitation.

The reservation here was created by questionable land exchanges arranged by
the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power and the federal government in
the 1930s. Some tribal members still talk of how their grandparents were
denied entry at some Bishop stores during that time.

The nearby Paiute Palace Casino, a major regional employer, is helping to
turn things around. Today, the tribe is a financial backer of local events,
such as the Bishop Labor Day and Christmas parades, and a festival known as
Mule Days.

Inyo County Dist. Atty. Art Maillet is Paiute-Shoshone, as is Gloriana
Bailey, general manager of the casino and head of the Bishop Chamber of
Commerce.

But the historic divide between whites and Indians has remained.

"The situation has opened our eyes to a lot of things," said Shawn
Bengochia, director of the reservation education center and Wayne
Bengochia's brother. "We're working hard to bridge the gaps between our
communities."

Surveying half a dozen Native American girls at play on a slide, he added:
"Hopefully, some good will come out of all this. We've got to get on with
our lives and not let anyone get in the way of our children's dreams."