Carter L. Crotteau helped to rescue Terry S. Willers from assault, Birchwood, Wisconsin, November 21, 2004. Willers, 47, was deer hunting on private property with several others, including Crotteau’s father and brother. They and other members of the party confronted a trespasser on the property and directed him to leave. The trespasser, armed with a rifle, started to walk away but then opened fire on the hunters, wounding Willers and two other men and killing the remaining three, including Crotteau’s father and brother. At the party’s nearby cabin, Crotteau, 18, college student, was alerted by radio to the shooting and, despite not knowing the assailant’s whereabouts, responded to the scene in an all-terrain vehicle with Willers’s son. With Willers helped into the vehicle, Crotteau drove him and his son back to the cabin, meeting briefly with Willers’s daughter and another hunter who had started to the scene to render assistance. Those two rescuers were then shot and mortally wounded by the assailant while en route. The assailant reappeared at the scene and opened fire on one of the surviving victims, then fled. Crotteau returned to the scene, followed by two men in a pickup truck who rescued the survivors. Having located his father and brother, Crotteau went back to the cabin and evacuated two others from the area. Willers required hospital treatment for his wound, and he recovered.
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