Navajo police shooting: Violence haunts a land of tradition

RED VALLEY –

From the eastern slope of the Chuska Mountains, a spine of green slicing through the ocher flats here on Arizona's distant edge, the Navajo homeland stretches out to a depth that dwarfs any sense of time or place.

Shiprock, the eroded throat of a prehistoric volcano dozens of miles away, floats against the horizon, where the states of the Four Corners spread their borders across a landscape indifferent to human influence.

But here, in the dark of a Thursday night, human conflict came into tragically close range.

A young man from the Navajo reservation led police on a manhunt across the invisible line into Arizona and to this slope above Red Valley. There, authorities say, Justin Fowler confronted police with heavy gunfire. The firefight killed both Fowler and a tribal police officer: Alex Yazzie, a former Marine and law-enforcement veteran. Two other officers were wounded; one was still in the hospital under close watch two days later.

Those two days that followed drew Navajo families into mourning and a search for meaning in the communities sprinkled beyond the shoulders of the region's two main highways, in the places both the deceased men called home. Meetings of hundreds of people stretched for hours, as those who knew the officer tried to articulate what the tragedy meant for a way of life.

Many of the communities along the mountainside and below have power and water lines built by the tribe. Still, some in the area live partly or entirely off the grid, gathering wood from the mountain for heating, hauling their own water.

The towns and their tribal chapters exist under the unique autonomy afforded to sovereign tribes, which means legal authority oscillates between tiny local entities and a distant federal bureaucracy.

As on most of the reservation, they are separated by great distances that often make police response slow. Like much of the reservation, they are steeped in family and tradition. Like much of the world, they sometimes grind against the historical force of poverty and the private traumas of abuse.

But they are not often rattled by violence from the barrel of a gun.

On Saturday morning in Shiprock, N.M., the town that straddles the San Juan River northeast of the volcanic spire, Rex Yazzie sifted through the gently used children's clothes and turquoise necklaces at a Saturday morning swap meet. He grappled aloud with the specter of violence that had become so close and yet felt so foreign, and with the report that the gunman in the shootout used a military-style AR-15 rifle.

"Hardly anyone has guns like that," he said. "People here have .22s, small rifles. In the city, everyone has guns, but out here, hardly."

He and his wife, from nearby Newcomb, learned of the shooting Saturday night when they attended a Pentecostal revival in Red Valley. They had expected a bigger crowd but found many people were unable to get there because of roadblocks — and because they were afraid, Yazzie said.

"Nothing like this ever happens out here," he said. "Out here, people are peaceful."

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Alex Yazzie grew up in Crownpoint, N.M. He played baseball as a child, but wasn't much for sports.

He served in the Marine Corps, doing basic training at California's Camp Pendleton. After his enlistment, he went home to the reservation.

Donovan Becenti had been friends with Yazzie since the two were teenagers. They and another friend were the class clowns at Crownpoint High School, he said during a Friday night memorial.

All three boys ended up in law enforcement, Becenti said. During their time in training, the teenage horseplay evolved into inside jokes that drew "weird looks from the instructors."

At the same meeting, Charlotte Tapaha, Yazzie's cousin, talked about his love for his work, noting his final Facebook post.

It was a photo, of Yazzie's laptop and cup of coffee. The caption read:

"I love doing reports….. haha! I'd rather be chasing after someone, while I'm getting cussed at and being laughed at. Moments later that person is on the ground."

He concluded: "I have my cup of motivation to get me through."

Sgt. Anderson Harvey said he hired Yazzie in 2002 as an officer deputized to work with the Navajo Nation's Environmental Protection Agency work out of Crownpoint, a community of some 3,000 — the seat of a tribal chapter and one of the largest towns on the reservation's east side.

The job, enforcing environmental regulations, involved a lot of public outreach, and Yazzie was good at it, the sergeant said.

"Alex was our first officer that came on board to start the program," Harvey said Saturday. "Everything about Alex was perfect to be a law-enforcement officer — outstanding background. He got along with everybody."

Harvey remembered Yazzie talking about his passions: his Marine Corps service. The old cars and dirt bike he worked on in his free time. His children — a teenage daughter, and the 10-year-old son and 3-year-old twins he had with his wife, Miranda.

And his mother. "She raised him properly to be a good citizen," Harvey said. "He did serve his country, and he did come back to serve his community."

After 10 years on the job, Yazzie shifted to police patrol work and would be based in Shiprock. Yazzie, Harvey said, was building the credentials to become a border patrol or other federal agent.

"He was going step-by-step in how he was progressing in his career," Harvey said. "We talked about these things."

Instead, his career ended on a two-lane road toward a mountain pass.

There, Donovan Becenti would cross paths with his fellow class clown one last time.

Becenti had become a crime-scene technician for the Navajo Department of Criminal Investigations. On Thursday night, he had worked a homicide in another part of the reservation before being summoned to his next assignment.

He would arrive to find he was processing the scene of the shooting that killed Alex Yazzie, his fellow officer and childhood friend.

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The picture of the life of Justin Fowler was less clear.

His story centers on Little Water, a hamlet off U.S. 491, about 20 miles south of Shiprock. There, a small creek drops down from the Chuskas to twist past scrub brush and the local gas station before it slips beneath the highway bridge.

Here, police say, Fowler's brother called for help Thursday afternoon, reporting that the man was beating his wife and mother with a pistol. By the time an officer arrived, Fowler was parked near the highway. When he saw the police officer, police said, he raised an AR-15 and fired, then fled.

He reappeared hours later, at 8:20 p.m., police said, racing toward a command truck, then making a quick U-turn. The ensuing chase led west, as Navajo Nation police amassed on the man who had eluded them earlier.

They crossed state line into Arizona on Navajo 13, which twists over the high Buffalo Pass. Snow and ice often close it in winter. The rest of the year, it is an important connection to the interior reservation, to the larger community of Chinle and the nation's community college.

The gunman and police climbed toward the hillside, where the pursuit would end.

Local newspapers reported that a Facebook page for a man named Justin Fowler, from Little Water, showed photos of an AR-15. That profile was removed Thursday.

Even Fowler's age remained an uncertain subject. Police initially reported he was 24; jail records that appeared to be for him from New Mexico in a 2009 incident indicated he would be 26.

The Daily Times of Farmington, N.M., published a statement from Fowler's family online.

"Our sincerest condolences go out to the family of Officer Alex Yazzie," it read. "We, as parents, raise our children the best way we know how. When they reached the age where they get on their own feet to face the world, with the freedom of choice, some of our children do make the wrong decisions, such as in this tragic event. ... All officers did their best to assist and protect our family members, but nonetheless, it ended in tragedy on both sides of the families. ... We hope you find it in your hearts to forgive our son."

By weekend, the signs of the clashes in Little Water were gone, save for three front yards with flags at half staff.

Sheep ambled across the roads on Saturday afternoon. Neighbors politely declined to be identified. So did the clerk at the convenience store near where the first shots were fired.

At the white mobile home where police were originally summoned, a fence encircled the property. Two children bounced on a trampoline in the front yard. Then a young man drove out from the property, his window rolled down.

"My family would like some privacy," he said. He wheeled the car around to return, then stopped and repeated: "My family would like some privacy."

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At the Shiprock Police Department, the base of the flagpole bearing the flag of the Navajo Nation had sprouted more than a dozen bouquets of daisies, tulips, and carnations. Bright cellophane crinkled in the sunlight, a tiny American flag nestled amid the blooms.

Janice Mescal, 58, of Fruitland, walked to the makeshift shrine to add a bouquet of faux lilies.

"I didn't know him, but one of my first jobs was with the police department," she said.

Just out of high school, Mescal worked as a dispatcher, she said, spending years on the evening and night shifts.

She wiped tears away as she spoke. "They're family in Crownpoint," she said. "You become family."

The idea of policing itself remained a current in the local discussions.

The last time a Navajo Nation officer was shot in the line of duty was in 2011. Sgt. Darrell Curley, 48, was responding to reports of a fight at a home in Kaibeto.

But the reservation itself stretches police thin.

Navajo police respond to calls on remote highways and unpaved roads that turn to mud in wet weather. The tribal police department has 365 commissioned officers to cover 27,425 square miles, an area larger than 10 of the 50 U.S. states.

By mid-afternoon, about 100 people had gathered at the Eva B. Stokely Elementary School for a community forum.

Such meetings are a way of life at chapter houses across the reservation, and as Saturday's speakers — sometimes in Navajo, sometimes in English — passed the first hour, then another and another, the effect was part wake, part reckoning.

It was time to celebrate Yazzie as a model Navajo Nation citizen, and to reflect on the culture itself: what people there could be doing better, what could have kept the shooting from happening.

One woman asked for people to buy their children books and educational toys for holidays so the kids can have a stronger start in school.

A man, a police chaplain, talked about the need for more social services and public attention to prevent youth suicide, about the need to seek therapy for the range of psychological problems all communities face.

Chapter Representative Amber Kanazbah Crotty, 36, took the microphone. She was formal in a concho belt and velvet top and skirt for an occasion when most wore jeans.

"Our Nation has two grieving families now," she said. "The Nation needs to support both families."

Outside the cafeteria, she elaborated.

"I know the Fowlers. His mom is amazing, she's an educator and she does so much," Crotty said. "We can't just say this is a bad kid from a bad family."

"Our words have a lot of power — that is just what we believe," she said. "And so you have to be careful about showing compassion."

As the meeting went on, Yazzie's wife, Miranda, was in Farmington, preparing to receive his body. The family left, headed toward a Shiprock funeral home. Behind them, 70 vehicles drove in escort.

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The Shiprock meeting stretched until dark Saturday, speaker after speaker weighing the future.

In Crownpoint, scene of a similar outpouring the night before, flagpoles bare.

At the Red Rock store on the roadside in Red Valley, Everrita Hosteenez was at work. She had seen the pursuit on the two-lane road outside, she said — "Ninety, 100 miles an hour — there was a cop car just right behind."

The roadside beyond Red Valley was fresh dirt, rutted with tire tracks. Across the asphalt, fading now, was a rust-colored stain of blood.

Beyond that spot, the slopes uphill were still white with snow. The highway climbed away from the red rocks and brush-covered desert, that land so broad it almost swallows the communities built on top of it. Communities where some still gather wood for heating and cooking, where the smell of woodsmoke hangs low some days. Communities left to grapple with a flash of violence.

After the sun sinks behind the Chuskas, passing cars provide the only glow. The homes below the mountain are scattered widely, the blackness pinpricked only occasionally by light.