Lost duo breaks into home

Filmmaker JoAnne Nowack last week returned to the remote Boundary County cabin where her husband experienced a near-fatal shooting 10 years ago.

The visit to the Eastport area almost turned into near-death for Nowack after she and fellow filmmaker Duane Lamar got lost in the dark and temperatures dropped.

After hiking eight miles through 3- to 4-foot deep snow, the exhausted pair found a home, but no one was there. Nowack - who was wet, cold and without proper clothing - and Lamar broke into the home of Dick and Barbara Merrill out of fear for their safety.

Less than two hours later, the Merrills returned home from a three-week vacation to find Nowack and Lamar in their home.

The Merrills understood.

“She (Nowack) was showing all signs of hypothermia,” Dick Merrill said Tuesday. “She had gone in the house and was dry after being wet. She was still shaking, and that was after two hours.”

“It was 28 (degrees) outside,” he continued. “They did nothing wrong. It was a black night. They were lost and they would've been in a bad situation.”

The filmmakers' interest in the cabin goes back to March 11, 1998, when Nowack's mentally ill brother, David Chitwood, shot Nowack's husband, David, in the head with a .22-caliber gun. The shooting occurred in the cabin near Robinson Lake.

Nowack was in Florida at the time, and on the phone with her husband when her brother shot him. David Chitwood then picked up the phone and told his sister he had shot her husband.

Nowack, who now lives in St. Croix, Virgin Islands, and Lamar of Largo, Md., returned to the area to make a documentary about how mental illness triggered a tragic event for this local family.

They parked near Robinson Lake and hiked three miles to the cabin on March 6. The deep snow resulted in it taking longer than expected. Nowack and Lamar began filming at 5 p.m. and daylight escaped them.

Nowack remembered what she thought would be a shorter path back to their van.

“It was really dark and there was no moon,” she said. “We couldn't see to take two steps.”

Nowack fell when she twisted her ankle and got drenched in the melting snow.

“The temperature was dropping and it started to seem like we were walking further away with no visibility,” Lamar said. “We kept walking, traffic in the distance was fainter and we heard what we thought were coyotes.”

“I was freezing,” Nowack added.

They walked for nearly two hours without any luck before finding the Merrills' home.

They made numerous attempts to make sure no one was there. They checked doors and windows on the first floor. Everything was locked.

They found a ladder leaning against the home and used it to get to an unlocked second-floor sliding glass door.

Nowack and Lamar went inside. They were concerned about the owners coming home and wrote a sign explaining their plight. They placed the sign at the front door in a lit area.

The Merrills pulled their vehicle up to the home to find fresh footprints in the snow and all the lights on in their home.

“We felt if someone was up to mischief, they wouldn't have the lights on,” Dick Merrill said.

The Merrills invited the couple to spend the night.

“We talked for hours,” Nowack said. “She gave us hot tea, wrapped me in a blanket and fed us. They brought us toothbrushes, jammies and an electric blanket. She tucked me in, and the next morning, they fed us a fabulous breakfast.”