Rapid City Journal: News Column
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‘Scrappy’ woman corners escapees
By Jim Holland, Journal Staff Writer

WOOD — Two escapees from a Chamberlain school for troubled teenagers
managed to evade capture during a 12-hour vehicle theft binge in eastern
and southcentral South Dakota Wednesday night.

But then they encountered a determined woman wielding a shotgun.

“I called 911 and said we have the fugitives,” said Sena Lauritsen, 55,
recalling a wild Thursday morning at her rural home, southwest of Wood
on the Mellette-Todd County line.

“I asked (authorities on the phone) if I could hold a gun on them and
they said yes, if I wasn’t afraid to,” she said.

“I wasn’t afraid.”

The two boys, Pete Paul Fast Horse, 16, of Wood, and Jeremy Feltman, 15,
of Sioux Falls, were on the lam after breaking out a window at the
Chamberlain Academy at 11:30 p.m. Wednesday, according to the South
Dakota Highway Patrol.

The boys allegedly made their getaway in a Chevrolet Beretta stolen in
Chamberlain, then headed for Sioux Falls.

A Chevy Cavalier and Ford Explorer were later reported stolen in Sioux
Falls.

The pair abandoned the Explorer and Cavalier in a rural Todd County
farmyard, stealing a 1997 Ford four-wheel-drive owned by Calvin Collins,
the Highway Patrol said.

Randy Roede, a South Dakota state trapper from Murdo, saw the pair
driving north into Mellette County. Attempts to reach Roede and Collins
for comment Friday were unsuccessful.

Fast Horse was at the wheel and Feltman was sitting on the tailgate when
they sped through a county road T-intersection and crashed into an
embankment. The Ford was destroyed. The boys fled on foot.

Authorities giving chase alerted neighbors. Collins called Lauritsen.

“I have wonderful neighbors who told me there were fugitives headed
toward my place,” she said.

Lauritsen grabbed the keys from her old Cadillac parked in the yard,
locked her doors and headed upstairs where a bedroom window offered a
good view.

She wasn’t alone. Friends from Seattle, a family of four, were visiting.
Lauritsen had planned to take them swimming before the fugitives were
reported nearby.

Collins called again to say the fugitives had been seen farther north.
Lauritsen and her visitors had decided to resume their swimming trip
when they saw the boys approaching the house about 11 a.m. Thursday.

Lauritsen admitted being angry when one of the boys rattled a patio
door. That’s when she called 911 and grabbed a 20-gauge, semi-automatic
shotgun loaded with four shells.
“It’s my rabbit gun,” she said.

She yelled at the boys and pointed the gun at them through the closed
glass door.

“I wasn’t going to open the door. I told them what to do and they did
it,” she said.

Lauritsen said she didn’t want to shoot, but she was ready to protect
herself and her home.

“This is my little bit of heaven. They had no right to invade it,” she
said.

The boys said nothing as she held them at bay, hands in the air, for
about 20 minutes until Jones County Sheriff Chris Jung arrived to take
them into custody.

“They were all wet from coming through the stock ponds, They had no
shoes. They looked pathetic,” she said.

“Some mother should have loved them.”
Lauritsen said the incident is the talk of the town in Wood, population
73. She’s taking some pretty serious ribbing in stride, including being
tagged with the nickname “Vigilante Mama.”

Her husband, Dennis, who was not home at the time, has since given her
lots of hugs. Her visitors were frightened, but brave, she said.

“I’m proud of what I did,” she said.

She chuckled when a reporter told her of a Highway Patrol report
incorrectly describing her as a “scrappy, 90-year-old woman.”

“I’m not 90,” she said. “But I am scrappy.”

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