Questions, unease in death investigation

SANDPOINT — Unease is welling for a Sandpoint man whose son was found shot to death in Boundary County last fall.

Ricky Malachi Stewart’s body was found inside a cabin he rented on a farm on Sept. 24, 2013. The 25-year-old died of a gunshot wound to the face.

Four months later, the circumstances surrounding the shooting remain mysterious.

Stewart’s death was initially classified as a suicide by Boundary County Coroner Mick Mellett, according to Stewart’s father, Hollis.

“There’s no way around it. You need to accept it was a suicide,” Hollis Stewart recalled the coroner telling him.

Hollis Stewart had doubts that his son took his own life. They had just spent an uneventful weekend together and his son did not seem despondent or even depressed. Moreover, Ricky Stewart had firm plans to road trip to Alabama and Texas on a touring motorcycle he recently acquired.

However, Hollis Stewart recalled that his son was anxious to leave the farm, but was holding out until he was paid by its operators because the money he earned was going to sustain his travels and perhaps enable him to purchase property in the South.

Although the swiftness of the coroner’s determination was off-putting, Hollis Stewart said he tried to come to grips with the idea that his son committed suicide.

But after laying his son to rest about a month later, Hollis Stewart said he received a phone call from Boundary County Sheriff Greg Sprungl’s chief deputy, Rich Stephens, who informed him his son’s death was now being regarded as an alcohol-related accidental shooting. Hollis Stewart said his son was legally drunk when he was shot.

Investigators apparently retreated from the suicide determination because an autopsy revealed that his son’s eyes were open when the shot was fired, as evidenced by powder burns to the whites of his eyes.

Sheriff’s officials, according to Hollis Stewart, theorized that Ricky Stewart mishandled the .45-caliber semiautomatic pistol, possibly while attempting to clean it despite the absence of a cleaning kit.

“When they went back on suicide and then they come up with this accidental shooting thing, I said, ‘Look, if that’s what you think it is, all I’m asking you is to show me how it happened. Show me with the evidence — not your theory — but the evidence,’” Stewart said.

But instead of doing that, Hollis Stewart said sheriff’s officials stonewalled his inquiries and evaded him.

The runaround included either an outright lie or profound misstatements about a critical piece of evidence in the investigation — a gunshot residue test. To Hollis Stewart, the test would either support investigators’ theory of Ricky Stewart’s death or fatally undermine it.

Hollis Stewart said he was initially told the gunshot residue samples were being sent to a lab in Pennsylvania, which was one of the reasons for the holdup in the investigation. Then he was told the analysis wasn’t being done, but that he could have the test done at his own expense.

Now Hollis Stewart has been told that the gunshot residue evidence is being tested at a lab in Oregon, although he admits he is afraid the development is yet another effort to draw out the investigation.

Mellett summarily rejected public records requests for his autopsy report and that of the Spokane County Medical Examiner’s Office, claiming their release would violate federal health care privacy laws.

Both reports, however, were supplied to The Daily Bee, although neither document sheds any light on the circumstances surrounding the shooting.

The reports state Ricky Stewart died of a gunshot wound near the bridge of his nose and the path of the bullet was from front to back with an upward angle of unspecified degree.

Mellett’s report states that the gunshot was fired from “intermediate range,” which generally means the muzzle was held away from the skin, but close enough to produce gunpowder tattooing. His report concludes the manner of death was accidental, but does not indicate what informs that conclusion.

Mellett said the determination based upon his autopsy report and the findings of the sheriff’s office investigation, but declined to discuss the contents of the law enforcement report.

“The law enforcement report is not something I would discuss. That is something that law enforcement would discuss,” said Mellett.

Mellett said he stands behind his work in the case.

“We were dealing with wounds that were inconsistent with suicide and inconsistent with homicide,” Mellett said.

Sprungl did not respond to repeated requests to discuss the investigation. Stephens, his chief deputy, also did not respond to a request for comment.

Sheriff’s officials have denied public records requests for deputies’ reports concerning Ricky Stewart’s death.

“Because we are awaiting receipt of final reports from another agency and in view of additional evidentiary testing expected to be performed, the case is as of this writing still classed as ‘open’ or ‘pending/on-going investigation,’” Boundary County Sheriff’s Civil Deputy Mike Rosenthal said in a Jan. 16 denial of the request for investigative reports.

For Hollis Stewart, questions are piling up in the void created by the sheriff’s extended silence on the matter. They include Ricky Stewart’s interactions with people at the farm immediately prior to his death, their statements to investigators, fingerprint evidence and its relation to the gun that was found at the scene.

Concern that a careless death investigation was conducted is also mounting.

The crime scene was cleaned up in the wake of the initial suicide determination. Sheriff’s officials told Hollis Stewart he could retrieve his son’s pistol, but discovered that it was being held in a deputy’s desk rather than an evidence locker.

“It’s enough to go through losing a child, much less having to deal with a circus in the process,” Hollis Stewart said.

Although sheriff’s officials say the matter remains under investigation, his death has officially been classified as an accident with the state, according to a Jan. 13 death certificate obtained by The Daily Bee.

Hollis Stewart figured the worst day of his life was the day that a law officer showed up at his door to tell him that his only son was dead. He admits he was wrong.

“Every day that has come after has that been the worst day of my life,” he said.