Mushroom pickers clear out after fight

By NANCY KIMBALL

and KAREN NICHOLS

The Daily Inter Lake

Authorities on Monday released the names of two Marion men being held on hate-crime charges after an incident involving migrant Asian mushroom pickers on Saturday evening.

Edward Hubbs, 26, and Daniel Devine, 25, are being held in the Flathead County jail on initial charges of malicious intimidation or harassment relating to civil or human rights. County Attorney Ed Corrigan was determining on Monday whether to formally file those charges against the men or to file charges of criminal endangerment.

Both are felonies.

They were expected to be arraigned in Justice Court Monday afternoon.

On Monday at the Moose Crossing campground in Marion, where the confrontation took place, many of the campsites that had been filled on Saturday were vacant after the campers moved on to other mushroom picking sites in Montana and Eastern Idaho.

Some of those who remained were staying close to their tents rather than venture out into the forest.

"I don't feel safe, that's why I don't go" out into the woods to pick mushrooms, At Nachampassak of Klamath Falls, Ore., said. It's his first year of picking, working nearly 12-hour days starting at 6 a.m.

He was among a group of eight or 10 family and friends who decided to let things cool down for a couple of days and forgo the income they could have been bringing in by heading out to pick mushrooms.

"This is usually a very peaceful place," Moose Crossing owner Vernon Taber said on Monday. He said he has owned the campground, laundry and store for eight years, and characterized the Laotians, Thais and Cambodians in his campground as "lovely, kind people."

He called Saturday's attack "indiscriminate violence stemming from race," adding that he knew the attackers.

Flathead County Sheriff Mike Meehan on Monday said the investigation is continuing, with further arrests possible.

Meehan said Hubbs offered a slightly different version of events from what deputies were told during their initial investigation Saturday night.

In that first report from Saturday, the Sheriff's Office said the incident started at the Bitterroot Quick Stop on U.S. 2 in Marion just before 8 p.m. Saturday. The report said two white men in two pickups took a baseball bat and a tire iron out of the vehicles and allegedly threatened some migrant mushroom pickers, using racial slurs.

One of the migrant workers reportedly pulled a gun out of his vehicle and fired two shots in the air, then the two parties separated.

Meehan said Hubbs later told authorities that he and his sister had gone into the convenience store, where the migrant workers allegedly threatened to beat up Hubbs. The verbal exchange moved outside to the parking lot, Meehan said, where one of the Asians allegedly fired two shots into the air. Everyone then went their separate ways.

"Then, instead of Hubbs contacting law enforcement officials" and letting them handle the situation, Meehan said, "he takes it upon himself and, along with a friend, he goes to the campground to start another confrontation."

According to the incident report, the workers were at the Moose Crossing campground shortly after 10 p.m. when two pickups and a car pulled up.

As many as seven men - Taber estimated nine or 10 - got out and, shouting racial slurs and throwing bottles into campsites, started looking for the migrant workers that Hubbs and Devine encountered earlier.

Chan Saysamone, another of the group who stayed in camp on Monday, said that as occupants emerged Saturday night, the men continued on to three or four other sites until they found the workers they sought.

They then knocked down the migrants one by one until the migrants began to fight back, the Sheriff's Office reported. Meehan said Hubbs' sister was not among the people who drove to the campground.

Others at the campground told deputies that the migrants did not provoke the attackers. One man reportedly had a rifle and fired five or six shots in the air. Meehan said that man allegedly was Hubbs.

Deputies later arrested Hubbs and Devine at a Marion bar and at one of their homes.

None of the people involved in the incident were hospitalized for injuries, but people in the campground on Monday said that three of the intruders were hurt.

The pickers "hurt two of the attackers right off as they retaliated," Taber said.

He said that, of the 150 or so mushroom pickers in the campground on Saturday, about 75 to 100 left after the incident. "They don't have to put up with that stuff," a mushroom buyer from Oregon said.

Because of an apparent lack of organization to the alleged attack, Meehan said it does not appear the incident is connected with any organized white supremacy group. Although "this dispute with the two in jail has settled itself," Meehan said, law enforcement officials from several agencies are keeping their eyes open.

"It is pretty serious. We don't want it to escalate any more," he said. "With the Brush Creek and Chippy Creek burns so close up there, there will be a lot more pickers."

Morel mushrooms, prized by high-end restaurants that depend on commercial pickers for the delicacy and by locals who want them for their own tables, typically grow in abundance on the forest floor the year following a fire.

The workers at the campground all are commercial pickers working the Chippy Creek and Brush Creek burn.

"There's a lot of people up there. If the moisture comes back, we'll get more mushrooms," Meehan said. "There's always a certain amount of animosity between [residents] and the migrant pickers. I don't think it's a big issue, but we do monitor it."

He said his office handled one other report recently where a young child was missing in the Brush Creek burn area, and a woman who was among the migrant workers found and returned the child to safety.

Law enforcement patrols on the Tally Lake Ranger District already have been stepped up as far as staffing allows, but U.S. Forest Service officers have encountered little trouble other than a few people driving behind locked gates.

Dale Brandeberry, patrol captain for the Forest Service's Northwest Montana Zone that covers the Flathead, Lolo and Kootenai national forests, said the only other incident in his territory this year was one claim of stolen mushrooms.

"Every time I've worked on mushroom picking, there always tends to be some territorialism," Brandeberry said. He was patrol captain for the Lolo National Forest before coming to Kalispell, and said incidents of commercial pickers firing shots into the air to establish their territory from time to time were misinterpreted as shots fired at other pickers.

"Most are territorial over their mushrooms," he said. "We haven't had much of that this year. Actually, it's quite a lot lower."

With the weather drying up, he said the mushroom crop's peak has passed and the season could be over without more rain in the near future. Still, he said mushroom pickers should communicate clearly with each other to avoid problems.

"Most people can communicate with each other no matter what language they speak," Brandeberry said. "Let them know they're safe, and don't brandish weapons."