Two More BWCA Terrorists Sentenced
12 Aug
Two adults found guilty in the August 7, 2007 shooting rampage in northern Minnesota’s Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness were sentenced yesterday to three years in state prison. Both men are also banned from entering the popular wilderness area for five years.
Barney James Lakner and Jay Andrew Olson, both of Ely, Minnesota, were part of a six-member, two-motorboat party that terrorized canoe campers on Basswood Lake with gunfire and threats of rape and death. Three other perpetrators have received reduced sentences after cooperating with authorities, and the final suspect, a minor, faces a pre-trial hearing on September 8.
The rampage was motivated, in part, by lingering local resentments over the million-acre wilderness.
Full reports on the sentencing hearing, which included emotional statements by a woman camping with her family on Basswood Lake that night and from Superior National Forest Superintendent Jim Sanders, can be found in the Duluth News -Tribune, HERE, and the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, HERE.
Prosecutors said that 48 Basswood Lake campers were threatened on the night in question.
