Dozens of shots sparked fear, panic, Yellowstone workers recount

CANYON VILLAGE—More than a dozen concession employees at Yellowstone’s Canyon Village recalled Tuesday hearing dozens of shots when law enforcement confronted, shot and killed fellow concession worker Samson Fussner on Thursday.

They told about how they were warned to stay indoors the night before and how the confrontation and shooting happened suddenly the next day. One said he heard eight shots, then a barrage of another 30.

Law enforcement killed Fussner, a 28-year-old Florida resident and concession worker, after Yellowstone officials said he walked toward an occupied building firing a semi-automatic rifle. The killing left workers rattled and uneasy.

The workers interviewed were young, many were foreigners and most asked that their names not be used. All those interviewed said they were offered counseling following the Independence Day incident.

Some knew Fussner, vaguely. The employees are seasonal and only begin working when the complex starts to open in mid-May.

“He was around, he worked,” said one female employee who told her story outside the Canyon Eatery. She did not want to give her name.

Fussner wasn’t necessarily an oddball, she said, but “we didn’t talk to him a lot.”

“They knew there was a guy with a gun,” she said. “The night before they told us we couldn’t go out at night. “The next day, everything happened.

“I heard shots,” she said. “There were a lot, like 30. It scared me.”

Rangers ‘did their job’

The park has since released an account of how authorities learned of Fussner’s threats just after midnight Thursday and searched widely for him. They encountered him only when was seen at about 8 a.m. Thursday advancing toward the service entrance of a facility the Park Service said was occupied by 200 people and which they identified only as Canyon Lodge.

The Canyon Village complex includes a Visitor Education Center, several restaurants, some retail shops and a bear spray rental kiosk. The Canyon Lodge next door has several multi-story hotel buildings and associated cabins.

Employees live in dorms between the Lodge buildings and the retail, food and visitor center complex. The village is named after the nearby Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone River that features the river’s iconic Lower Falls.

Outside the Canyon Eatery on Tuesday, a group of three workers finished their lunch in the shade as they prepared to get back to their jobs, which returned to regular schedules later that day.

They heard gunshots. How many?

“Too many,” one said. “We were just panicking,” she said. “We run.”

A male companion said workers were told to evacuate their dorms.

“They announced it,” he said of a new warning Thursday morning. “All of the guests and employees should go outside for our safety.”

He said he was frightened, “a little bit, because we heard a lot of gunshots.”

The law enforcement rangers, he said, “they did their job.”

It’s going to take some time

Several workers said they didn’t want to talk.

“I don’t want to relive it,” one young man said. Nobody told him to avoid the media, he said.

“It’s just me, personally,” he said of his silence. “Right now a lot of the employees are in the same boat.”

“I’m fine,” another worker said when asked about counseling and her mental health. But she, too, couldn’t talk about the incident.

“I can’t tell you something about that,” she said.

Sydney Zulywitz found the event alien to a nature reserve. “It was never something we considered,” she said.

“It happened without warning,” her friend Sydney Rich, another Canyon worker, said.

Zulywitz attended a counseling session offered by the Park Service and concessionaire Xanterra Travel Collection, which employees said lasted about 30 minutes.

Zulywitz said the experience was too raw to recount, begging off of recounting any details. She went to a counseling session, she said.

“I didn’t know I needed it ’til I went and walked to the building,” she said pointing to the Canyon Visitor Education Center where the sessions were offered.

“It was a big, big thing,” Zulywitz said of the traumatic shooting. She, too, couldn’t bring herself to go into details about what she witnessed.

Counseling helped, she said, but recovery, “it’s going to take some time.”

It was his day

A Canyon employee, who said his nickname was Emi, roomed next to Fussner. But, “I didn’t know him.”

He said he and others usually do stretching exercises outside every morning. But that day he did them indoors because of orders.

“That was not good,” he said, suggesting authorities might have done more to evacuate people. The park’s statement Tuesday, however, underscored how law enforcement searched unsuccessfully for Fussner.

Emi said he didn’t feel safe.

“I haven’t seen any improvement these two days,” he said. “More security guys, but that’s it.”

Terrell Hollow lives in a dorm about 70 feet from the incident, he said, but slept in on his day off.

“It was crazy,” he said of the story he heard when he woke.

“Everybody has their days,” he said. “It was his day.”

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