Not 'The Lucas I Knew': Family Of Yellowstone Shooter Shocked By July 4 Standoff

Lucas Fussner walked into a car dealership in Pensacola, Florida, on April 16 and asked for a spacious, all-wheel-drive car he could trade outright for his Camry so he could start a new life in Wyoming.

He told salesman Isaac Schmidt that he’d gotten a job with a concessionaire company in Yellowstone National Park and was eager to flee Florida’s endless beaches for the park’s cool mountains.

Schmidt had a hard time finding a roomy, hardy vehicle that would make a straight trade for the Camry, and the two men spent five hours navigating Fussner’s options. They got to know each other during that time.

Fussner had a wide-eyed naivete and awkwardness, but he was inquisitive and asked Schmidt many questions about his own life, Schmidt recalled.

Ultimately, Fussner settled on a Rogue Sport — all-wheel-drive but not roomy. It wasn’t the perfect fit, but it was the best he could get for the Camry.

Fussner left Schmidt a glowing review, albeit anonymously, Schmidt recalled. He said he knew the John Doe review was from Fussner because Fussner had mentioned it in a phone call after the sale.

Three months later on the Fourth of July, authorities reported that Fussner had taken a young woman hostage in Yellowstone National Park’s Canyon Village, threatened a mass shooting and shot a Yellowstone National Park Ranger in the leg before being shot and killed himself.

A Knock At The Door

When FBI agents came knocking on the door of Carolyn Reeves’ Florida home on Independence Day, she wondered if her ex-husband was in trouble.

She was home alone with one of her adult daughters. It was about 9 p.m. and after dark in the Sunshine state. Reeves, 55, noted the presence of an FBI agent, another person she figured was an assistant and several officers.

She didn’t let them in at first, Reeves told Cowboy State Daily in a phone interview.

“Please tell me it’s my ex,” Reeves told the agents.

“No, it’s your son Lucas,” they answered.

Eventually, she let the FBI agent in, and he told her things that Reeves said she couldn’t believe.

Samson Lucas Bariah Fussner, 28, had been shot dead after shooting a park ranger in the leg, the agent told her.

“The girl,” Fussner’s alleged hostage, told authorities that Lucas said he wanted to go to the dining hall in Canyon Village and “shoot Jew-babies,” the agent told Reeves.

That notion blew Reeves’ mind, she said.

“He was raised in a Christian home. We know that Jews are God’s chosen people and that Jesus was a Jew — and Lucas was a Christian,” said Reeves.

A Baptism

One of 10 children in a blended family, Lucas was baptized when he was about 8 years old, Reeves said.

That was also the year Lucas’ dad, Felic Fussner, was arrested on suspicion of child abuse and confinement, according to a police report the Escambia County Sheriff’s Office released last week to Cowboy State Daily.

The 20-year-old report says sheriff’s deputies responded at about 2 p.m. on May 29, 2004, to Carolyn and Felic Fussner’s home just outside Pensacola, Florida.

Dispatch told deputies Felic had taken his wife Carolyn’s keys and wasn’t letting her leave the home.

The dispatcher warned responding officers that Felic had been a U.S. Marine and was expected to be armed.

In Carolyn’s recollection, a SWAT team converged on the home.

The dispatcher called Fussner and told him to go outside and speak with deputies, the report says. His answer was to shut the front window curtains.

Several children were playing in the front yard, and deputies moved them to a safe location.

Lucas had been told to play in the bedroom during the chaotic scene.

Eventually, deputies were able to get Reeves and the other children out of the home and to safety.

Then Felic Fussner emerged from the back door, where deputies arrested him at gunpoint, the report says.

Reeves later told police that the couple had been arguing that day. He wouldn’t let Reeves feed one of the children, and he was accusing her of witchcraft for taking the kids to church without him, the report says.

He grabbed her arm and shoved her, the report says, before taking her car keys and telling her she couldn’t leave.

Reeves wasn’t about to leave her children home while Felic Fussner raged, she told Cowboy State Daily.

One Year Probation

Police arrested Felic on two felony charges of cruelty toward a child and kidnapping, two misdemeanors: battery and resisting an officer. The state prosecutor didn’t pursue the two felonies.

Felic’s resisting arrest charge was dismissed, and he was convicted and sentenced to one year of probation on the battery charge, the Escambia County Clerk’s Office told Cowboy State Daily.

Felic Fussner and Reeves finalized their divorce in 2005, Reeves said.

She characterized their marriage as torture, and Felic as abusive and vindictive. He wouldn’t let her sleep until she apologized if he had a nightmare about her cheating on him, she said.

“He was so controlling. We did homeschool, home church and home birth,” said Reeves, adding that Lucas Fussner was born at home in a two-bedroom house where his three older siblings and one cousin were already living.

“(Felic) wanted them born at home so they wouldn’t have birth certificates, Social Security numbers, so the government couldn’t take them from us,” said Reeves.

But during her divorce she obtained delayed birth certificates for the children so she could enroll them in public schools, she said.

Work Ethic

Following records and social media searches and multiple calls to now 62-year-old Felic Fussner’s family members and former colleagues, Cowboy State Daily was unable to reach him for comment by publication time.

Felic’s sister Falinda McClung countered Reeves’ characterization of the man in her own interview, saying she does not believe her brother was a bad influence on his children.

“He taught his boys a lot of what he knew, and really educated them in the workforce and gave them a drive to work,” said McClung. “He was very influential in their work ethic. I can’t see that as being a bad influence.”

McClure said she was shocked and saddened to hear Lucas Fussner had been killed in the Yellowstone shootout and found it uncharacteristic of the person she knew.

“The family just doesn’t know what to think,” she said.

‘Ghetto’

Once at public school, Lucas was bullied, his younger brother Gideon Fussner, 26, told Cowboy State Daily. Gideon, by contrast, recalled fitting in well at school.

Their schools were dangerous and they lived in the “ghetto,” Gideon added. By middle school, Lucas retreated to online homeschooling.

Carolyn Reeves recalled that time differently, saying Lucas was a bright student and brought home academic rewards.

Gideon, meanwhile, had drama of his own.

A pit bull-mastiff mixed-breed dog running out near the beach bit his face when he was about 7, leaving a hole in his cheek where he now bears a scar.

He won a $100,000 in lawsuit over the incident when he was 9, though $40,000 of it went to medical and attorney fees and the rest went into bonds and other accounts he couldn’t collect until his 18th birthday, he said.

In 2017 at age 19, Gideon shot and killed two former friends with whom he’d had an ongoing feud, and he wounded a third when the three came after him at another friend’s house.

Gideon claimed self-defense and a jury agreed, acquitting him one year later.

“They came in the house and they tried to shoot me,” Gideon said. “I shot them first. I was just quick.”

Gideon attributes the incident to bad blood and to the violence of living in a “ghetto” neighborhood.

Parting Ways

As a single mom, Reeves gave up homeschooling her kids and worked at a retail store to make ends meet. It was hard, but easier than being married to her ex-husband, she said.

Her oldest daughter was 16 and became like a “second mom.”

Lucas started having anger issues when quarreling with an older brother. Lucas was the “aggressor,” Reeves said.

At age 12, Lucas went to live with his dad, where his demeanor shifted, becoming more of a “protector” to his other siblings living there, Reeves said.

After Lucas’ memorial service outside Atlanta, Georgia, last week, Reeves and other loved ones watched home videos of his childhood, and it surprised Reeves to see videos in which Lucas and the older brother with whom he later quarreled were close and affectionate as little boys. She said she’d forgotten how close they were.

Reeves said she’s struggled to reconcile the Yellowstone incident and her son’s death these past three weeks, but having her other kids around to “remember the good times” has helped.

Lucas himself had compiled and downloaded the home videos his family watched after his service.

Reeves noticed that he only patched in scenes from her wedding that showed the kids dressed up and excluded scenes from her exchange of vows with Fussner, a gesture she called a sign of Lucas’ thoughtfulness.

“The Lucas I knew was very kind and considerate,” said Reeves as she began to weep.

Drifting Off

Family members who spoke to Cowboy State Daily did not recall much from Lucas’ teen years living with his father.

He was savvy with computers. He knew the online book market and made a living buying and selling books.

Neither Gideon nor his mother knew for certain what drove Lucas to Yellowstone.

Reeves noted that her son loved nature. Gideon said Lucas was probably weary of watching his siblings marry and work and live their lives, while he still led a largely reclusive life.

Lucas broke off communication with his father when he went to Yellowstone, Reeves related from a conversation she had with her youngest son.

The youngest son did not return a phone call requesting comment.

‘Creepy’

Parents of Lucas Fussner’s colleagues at Xanterra told Cowboy State Daily that Lucas was reported multiple times for being “creepy” with the young women there.

“It was just more like the feeling they got being around him,” Channing Leavelle Bartee, whose daughter works in Canyon Village, told Cowboy State Daily.

She related things her daughter has told her, and said her daughter is not ready to talk to the media.

Bartee said Lucas Fussner was always inviting the young women to go camping or hiking alone with him, and that he’d often ask them where they lived.

“I don’t think they were surprised that it (the shooter) was him,” said Bartee. “I don’t think they thought he’d do this — but I don’t think they were surprised.”

The age discrepancy may have exacerbated that “creepy” feeling, said Bartee. Lucas was 28 and many Xanterra workers are college-age youths seeking a summer adventure.

Gideon said the women‘s discomfort was likely because he was awkward with girls. Reeves agreed, saying he was so awkward that, “If he said something (to a girl) he wouldn’t know if it was inappropriate.”

What The Alert Said

After midnight July 4, Yellowstone’s dispatch center sent an alert to the nearby Park County dispatch, saying to be on the lookout for Lucas.

The alert said Lucas had taken a hostage, threatened to shoot up a fireworks show outside the park and may be on the run.

As it turned out, he didn’t make it out of Canyon Village, authorities have since indicated.

Multiple parents of Xanterra workers who declined to be identified by name told Cowboy State Daily that the hostage had somehow escaped prior to the shootout.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for Wyoming announced Wednesday in a related press release that Lucas had “attempted to shoot at people inside the Canyon Lodge employee dining room.”

Neither Gideon nor Carolyn could pinpoint what may have derailed Lucas, in their separate interviews. Gideon said he’s watching for more details and facts to surface.

Gone

Lucas Fussner last talked to his mother in September when he helped her youngest son move out of her home, Reeves said.

Lucas was cordial. She hugged him and said, “I love you. Don’t be a stranger.”

Not one for words, she said her son smiled and nodded.

Read More

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Former Top Park Service Officials Say Yellowstone Rangers Likely Saved Many Lives

Yellowstone Shooter Took Woman Hostage, Held Her At Gunpoint: Scanner Recording

Yellowstone Shooter Identified, Was 28-Year-Old Contract Worker From Florida

One Person Dead After Fourth Of July Shootout In Yellowstone

Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.