Prosecutor says woman charged in fatal border agent shooting had ties to people of interest in other homicides – VTDigger

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News in pursuit of truth ΔUpdated at 5:31 p.m.BURLINGTON — A Washington state woman who is charged in connection with the fatal shooting last week of a border patrol agent in northern Vermont has ties to individuals linked to three other homicides in the United States, according to a new filing by prosecutors in her case. Teresa Youngblut, 21, who was shot and wounded in the confrontation last week, appeared late Monday afternoon in federal court in Burlington, where she faces a charge of using a deadly weapon in an assault on a border patrol agent and a separate count of firing a gun during the assault. The charges stem from an investigation into the fatal shooting of border patrol agent David C. Maland that took place during a traffic stop of a vehicle Youngblut was driving on Interstate 91 in Coventry the afternoon of Jan. 20. A passenger, identified in the charging documents in Youngblut’s case as Felix Bauckholt, was also shot and killed in the incident.Youngblut, according to charging documents, fired shots during the traffic stop, but she has not been directly charged in Maland’s killing. Bauckholt also drew a firearm, but he was shot and killed before firing any shots, court documents stated. On Monday afternoon, Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew Lasher, the prosecutor, submitted a court filing ahead of Youngblut’s hearing for Magistrate Judge Kevin Doyle to consider Youngblut’s custody status. Lasher, in that five-page filing, wrote that one of the reasons for continuing to detain Youngblut was her “associations with other individuals suspected of violent acts.”Lasher wrote that the person who purchased the firearms Youngblut and Bauckholt possessed at the time of the Coventry shooting was a “person of interest” in a double-homicide in Delaware County, Pennsylvania. “Bauckholt flew into the United States in the hours preceding that Pennsylvania homicide,” Lasher wrote in the filing. Both Youngblut and the person who allegedly purchased the firearms used in the Vermont shooting, Lasher wrote, were “acquainted with and have been in frequent contact with an individual who was detained by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania during that homicide investigation; that individual is also a person of interest in a homicide investigation in Vallejo, California.”Lasher’s court filing did not provide the names of any of the individuals, nor further details on the Pennsylvania or California cases. “The defendant’s possession and use of a firearm, combined with her itineracy and associations, suggests she poses a current and substantial danger to the community that could not be addressed by a condition or a combination of conditions of pretrial release,” Lasher wrote.Youngblut’s hearing Monday afternoon lasted about 10 minutes and took place before a packed courtroom. There were many people from the law enforcement community in attendance, as well as members of the media and people who appeared to know Youngblut and made gestures to her after the hearing, though she didn’t appear to respond. Those people declined to comment when they left the courtroom.Steven Barth, a federal public defender representing Youngblut, also declined to comment following the hearing. Youngblut was brought into the courtroom in shackles, wearing a gray sweatshirt and gray pants. Her right arm was in a sling and she wore a blue medical mask. Barth wore a black mask for the proceeding.Youngblut answered questions posed to her by Doyle, the judge, about whether she understood the nature of the proceeding and the charges against her.She repeatedly answered, “Yes,” in a clear and direct voice.The hearing did not delve into the details of the charges against Youngblut. Instead, Lasher, the prosecutor, asked for three days to present his argument during which time he requested that Youngblut remain in custody.“Investigators,” he wrote in the filing, “are presently reviewing evidence, searching property, and conducting relevant interviews to assess not only the defendant’s culpability but also the extent of the risk the defendant poses to the community and the risk that the defendant would not appear for future proceedings”Doyle asked Barth if Youngblut was planning to seek a contested detention hearing in three days.“We are,” Barth replied.Doyle then set the contested detention hearing for Thursday morning.Youngblut’s court appearance took place exactly a week after she and Bauckholt were pulled over by U.S. Border Patrol about a dozen miles from the Canadian border. The charging documents made public late last week stated that a U.S. Department of Homeland Security database showed that Bauckholt’s visa “appeared” to have expired when the traffic stop took place. However, the FBI, which is heading the investigation, said last week that its probe into the shooting showed that Bauckholt’s visa was, in fact, “current.”After the shooting, Youngblut was taken for treatment for her injuries to Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, New Hampshire. The federal charges against her became public Friday morning and by Friday evening she was listed on a Vermont Department of Corrections online database as having been booked into the Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility in South Burlington, the state’s only women’s prison. Youngblut and Bauckholt had been under surveillance by federal authorities for about a week prior to the traffic stop, according to the charging documents. They had been spotted walking in downtown Newport wearing “tactical dress” only days before they were pulled over, the filing added.During the traffic stop, the charging documents stated, Youngblut, the driver, got out of the vehicle and opened fire. Bauckholt then drew a firearm, according to the filing.At least one border patrol agent then fired his gun at Youngblut and Bauckholt, the charging documents stated. None of the federal agents at the scene besides Maland were named in the charging documents. It was also not clear from the filing who fired the shots killing Maland and Bauckholt.Federal authorities seized many items from the vehicle following the shooting, including a ballistic vest, night-vision goggles, a tactical belt with holster, 48 rounds of .380-caliber jacketed hollow-point ammunition, two hand-held two-way radios, the court records stated.Also, according to the filings, authorities seized from the vehicle about a dozen electronic devices, identification documents and an “apparent” journal.In addition, the court documents stated, authorities found packages of suspected cell phones wrapped in what appeared to be aluminum foil behind a border patrol vehicle at the shooting scene.Lasher, in his court filing Monday, provided some new details into the ongoing probe and raised questions investigators appeared to be still seeking to answer.“While many circumstances of the incident are presently unclear, the available evidence readily demonstrates that the defendant possessed and discharged a firearm during an otherwise peaceful law enforcement interaction,” Lasher wrote in the filing.Youngblut, the prosecutor wrote, does not appear to have a reported criminal record, and her ties to Vermont were unclear.“At least one document recovered from the car she was driving purported to be a lease for a shared workspace in Shelburne, Vermont from June 2024, but the existence of an actual lease agreement has yet to be verified,” Lasher wrote.Her only “verified” ties to Vermont, the prosecutor added, were the firearms she and Bauckholt possessed. “Based on the firearms’ serial numbers, both firearms had been purchased by an individual purporting to be a resident of Orleans, Vermont from a federal firearms licensee in Mount Tabor, Vermont in February 2024,” Lasher wrote in the filing. Also, according to the prosecutor’s filing, data from a U.S. Department of Homeland Security database indicated that Youngblut had traveled internationally in 2022, 2023 and 2024. Youngblut had a journal at the time of the traffic stop in Vermont last week that, “in addition to containing apparent cypher text,” also included phrases such as “coming up on acid,” “not really sure what to spend this trip on,” “This lsd trip seems pretty mellow,” and “i fell kinda high vibrationy maybe more so than other lsd trips?”According to a report Friday in The Seattle Times, Youngblut’s parents reported to Seattle police in May that she was missing. The parents also reported that she had not been in contact with them or her friends and changed her phone number, the news organization reported.The parents, according to the news report, expressed concern to police that “she may be in a controlling relationship.”“Police told the parents Youngblut was ‘well within her rights to go where she wants’ since she was an adult, but her parents replied they thought the circumstances behind Youngblut’s recent behavior were ‘suspicious,’” according to the police report, the newspaper article stated. “Police determined there wasn’t enough to trigger a missing-person report.”Swift action in Washington, D.C., is already sending ripples across the country. Like you, our newsroom is closely following these developments, with a sharp focus on how they impact Vermonters. Times of rapid change create openings for misinformation, rumors and fear — but VTDigger is here to ensure that you have access to the facts. We work hard to verify the truth of everything we publish. As platforms like Facebook and Instagram abandon fact-checking policies, VTDigger is doubling down. We can’t do it alone. Only 2% of our readers help support VTDigger. If you can, please help sustain the pursuit of truth by becoming a monthly supporter of our independent, nonprofit newsroom. Thank you for being a discerning reader.Paul Heintz, Editor-in-chief, VTDiggerVermont’s newsletterRequest a correctionSubmit a tip
VTDigger’s criminal justice reporter.
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Source: http://vtdigger.org/2025/01/27/prosecutor-says-woman-charged-in-fatal-border-agent-shooting-had-ties-to-people-of-interest-in-other-homicides/