NATIONAL PARK SERVICE
                               MORNING REPORT

To:         All National Park Service Areas and Offices

From:       Division of Ranger Activities, Washington Office

Day/Date:   Tuesday, January 5, 1999

INCIDENTS

98-779 - Yosemite NP (CA) - Attempted Suicide; Life Saved

On Christmas day, park dispatch received a request from an off-duty park
employee for a "welfare check" of his potentially suicidal son.  The father
was returning to his residence from a trip out of town and had received
information that his son was extremely upset, had a knife, and was
threatening suicide.  Rangers Keith Lober, Gordon Gilbert and David Hajdik
responded, found the interior of the residence destroyed, and made an exigent
circumstances entry to locate the potentially suicidal youth.  Lober found
the boy in a bathroom; the boy brandished a large butcher knife and attempted
to incite Lober, pleading for the three rangers to shoot him.  The rangers
were able to disengage and called for additional backup.  Attempts to use
pepper spray to subdue the boy proved ineffective.  A perimeter was
established around the house and a crisis negotiator was requested.  The boy
advanced on the rangers three times while they were holding the perimeter,
each time attempting to provoke them to shoot him.  He continued to wander
through the inside of the house, waving the knife and slashing at his wrists,
then appeared at the backdoor.  Ranger Jim Tucker and special agent Scott
Hinson, who had dealt with the boy before in a similar situation and knew him
personally, talked to him there and tried to get him to drop the knife.  The
boy instead went back into the house and resumed brandishing the knife and
slashing at his wrists.  He was eventually contained in one part of the
house, where a CS tear gas grenade was employed in an effort to incapacitate
him so that he could be taken into custody.  The boy began climbing out of
the bathroom window within a minute after the gas began dispersing.  The
boy's father and Tucker asked him to drop the knife, which he did.  He was
taken into custody and brought to a standby ambulance, where he received
medical evaluation and treatment.  He was then transported to the park's
medical clinic, where he was detained on a mental health evaluation hold. 
Charges have also been presented to the county district attorney for
brandishing a deadly weapon at peace officers in order to resist arrest or
detention.  The boy suffered only minor self-inflicted knife wounds and the
transient effects of exposure to CS gas; he will likely be committed to the
care of a long-term, in-patient psychiatric facility.  Several park rangers
and an ambulance medic also sustained varying degrees of transient exposure
to CS tear gas.  [Jeff Sullivan, Supervisory SA, YOSE, 1/3]

98-780 - Death Valley NP (CA) - Airplane Crash

A Beechcraft Musketeer piloted by H.U., 67, of Lancaster,
California, crashed while taking off from the Furnace Creek airstrip just
after 4 p.m. on December 30th.  The plane crashed 500 feet off the runway. 
H.U. and his 29-year-old daughter sustained only minor injuries.  They
received on-scene care from park staff, then were transported by helicopter
to Las Vegas for further treatment.  The aircraft was totally destroyed.  The
FAA and NTSB are investigating, but it's already been determined that
H.U. had failed to release the yoke lock before taking off.  [Ed
Derobertis, Acting ACR, DEVA, 1/4]

RESOURCE MANAGEMENT AND PROTECTION

No entries.

PARK DISPATCHES

No entries.

OPERATIONAL NOTES

No entries.

MEMORANDA

No entries.

INTERCHANGE

No entries.

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Prepared by the Division of Ranger Activities, WASO, with the cooperation and
support of Delaware Water Gap NRA.

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