'Heroic' Yellowstone Park Rangers Likely Saved Lives During 4th of July Shootout

A shootout at Yellowstone National Park over the Fourth of July holiday weekend left one man dead and a park ranger injured. But some experts say the situation could have been much worse.

Samson Lucas Bariah Fussner, 28, of Florida, had been working as a contractor for food and hotel service provider Xanterra. Early in the morning on July 4, rangers responded to the park's Canyon Village—a huge collection of hotels, cabins, and employee housing—after reports of an armed person "making threats." A Be-On-the-Lookout alert from that morning claimed Fussner had reportedly "taken a female hostage, had threatened to shoot up public places, and had threatened to commit suicide by cop."

“When rangers contacted the individual there was an exchange of gunfire between the subject and law enforcement rangers,” the park said in a press release. It left Fussner dead and a park ranger injured. He was taken to a nearby hospital in stable condition. According to witnesses, an estimated 100 shots were fired. 

As the Powell Tribune notes, Yellowstone National Park is a federal jurisdiction, where crimes are investigated by federal agencies. The FBI handled the investigation.

“[With reports of] dozens, if not hundreds, of shots being fired, the fact that nobody was killed except the shooter tells me the park rangers acted in a very heroic way,” Rob Wallace, the former Assistant Secretary of the Interior for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife and National Park Service, told Cowboy State Daily. “It wasn’t one of those Uvalde situations where law enforcement sat around for an hour trying to figure out what to do."

An area around the Canyon Lodge complex was closed to visitors during the investigation. It has now been reopened.