Chris Jennings
๐ค SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
Thank you, Dave.
It's a pleasure to be here.
So, Randy and his friend Kevin Harris, who was sort of like an unofficial big brother to the Weaver kids, spent a lot of time living with them, was basically a member of the family.
And Samuel, just 14, all took off following the dogs barking into the woods together.
Randy took a different path down the hill than his son and friend.
And when the marshals confronted Randy, they saw him standing in the road and they told him to freeze.
And he screamed that he wouldn't in more colorful terms and turned around and ran up the hill back towards the cabin, firing his gun into the air to alert his son and friends to come home.
At that kind of precise moment, the younger men, Samuel and Kevin Harris, stepped out of the woods to see Stryker, the dog, kind of leaping around in front of one of the U.S.
marshals.
The marshal not seeing the boys, although all of this is disputed, but this is my best assessment of what happened based on everyone's telling of events that moment, the marshal
who were undeniably trying to get away.
They were fleeing, and they thought, well, if this dog is going to keep pursuing us, we're going to be shot by the Weavers.
They were under the belief that the Weavers were willing and capable of firing on federal agents.
Marshall shot the dog who died, and young Samuel, seeing his dog shot, immediately opened fire in the direction of the three Marshalls, hitting nobody,
But they returned fire and struck and killed Samuel Weaver, at which point Kevin Harris, who's carrying a big .30-06 hunting rifle, aimed into the woods where he believed the shots were coming from.
You can see little puffs of smoke.
And he let out a single shot, killing a deputy U.S.
marshal named William Deegan, and then ran over to check the pulse on Samuel, the boy,
Finding him dead, he took off up the hill where he informed the rest of the Weavers that Samuel, their son, was dead.
Yeah, I would say at the outset of the story when the Weavers, Vicki and Randy, get together and get married, they sort of could not be more normal.