Idaho sheriff who allegedly pulled gun on church youth group giving out thank-you notes is charged
The Idaho Attorney General’s Office has charged Bingham County Sheriff Craig Rowland with aggravated battery, aggravated assault and exhibition of a deadly weapon after he allegedly pulled a gun on a church youth group handing out paper turkeys in his neighborhood last month.
Sheriff Craig Rowland, who was charged on Tuesday, claimed he only had one drink before the incident but told Blackfoot Police Chief Scott Gay that he “really screwed up” during the Nov. 9 confrontation, according to KTVB7.
The seven girls, aged 12 to 16, were from a local Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints congregation and were accompanied by their female leader.
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“It has been a very difficult experience for our child to go through, especially the confusion caused whenever the behavior of trusted adults seems harmful and unpredictable,” a parent of one of the girls told The Idaho Statesman. “Throughout the entire ordeal, the Blackfoot Police Department and the representatives from the Attorney General’s Office have been absolutely professional and thorough. We are grateful for the way they have handled this situation.”
Court documents allege the group was going around posting thank-you notes shaped like turkeys on the doors of congregation members and then ringing the doorbell and running away so they wouldn’t be seen.
When they reached Rowland’s neighborhood, everything went well until they tried to leave a note for Rowland and his wife.
Rowland recalls in court papers that it was about 8 p.m. as he was taking his Yorkie outside that he saw two people run down the road from his house. He said he checked to see if his patrol vehicle had been broken into, then went back inside his home. Minutes after that, he said he heard his front screen door open and a knock.
Thinking someone was trying to break inside his house, Rowland said he asked his wife to get his gun and went outside. Home surveillance video shows Rowland in his long johns, socks and a T-shirt, then looking down and saying, “Thank you” and “That’s frickin bulls***.”
He said he later saw a vehicle driving down the road. He stopped it and opened the driver’s side door.
“I reach in and pull the driver out by the hair,” Rowland told investigators, according to court documents. “I say, ‘Who the f*** are you?’ And I do have a gun in my hand, but I still have my finger on the slide.”
Rowland admitted pointing his gun at the woman’s head, and she would later identify herself as a neighbor and family friend for three decades. The sheriff contends that he didn’t recognize her and would eventually allow the group to leave as he returned to his home.
“That’s when I really got scared because the gun was still at my head and he didn’t know who [I] was,” the woman noted in an affidavit, reports KTVB7.
The girls and their group leader recalled things differently. They claimed he threatened to shoot their group leader, saying the “f-bomb” multiple times.
Rowland, who will appear in court on Dec. 22, insists he wasn’t drunk and that the recent time change “really messed me up.” He claimed to have been on edge because of interactions he and his wife previously had with community members.
“I have been doing this job for 36 years. I’ve had drunk Indians drive down my cul-de-sac. I’ve had drunk Indians come to my door,” he said. “I live just off the reservation, we have a lot of reservation people around us who are not good people.”
