Hiker in Acadia says ranger assaulted him

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ACADIA NATIONAL PARK – Just by looking at Tim Wild, it’s easy to tell that something happened to him.

Wild, a waiter at the Jordan Pond House in this scenic park on Mount Desert Island, has a large purple bruise under his left eye and the left side of his face is swollen. A black contusion marks his left shoulder, where he was thrown to the ground while handcuffed, he said. Red scratches on his right wrist, he said, were caused by the police handcuffs he was wearing.

Wild, 31, said Tuesday he was brutalized by a park ranger in the wee hours of Monday morning after he and a few dozen other people hiked to the top of Day Mountain in the moonlight, an annual tradition for Jordan Pond House employees.

The outing soured after two rangers showed up, detained everyone and started checking their forms of identification, Wild said. It turned really ugly, he said, after he had been handcuffed, when he yelled at a ranger for throwing a female friend of his to the ground.

“That’s no way to treat a lady!” he said he yelled, admitting that he then called the ranger an expletive.

With that, the same ranger assaulted him, he said.

“He threw my face into the summit of Day Mountain,” Wild said, holding a bag of ice to his swollen face. He said he was knocked unconscious and had to be taken by ambulance to Mount Desert Island Hospital in Bar Harbor. He produced paperwork that stated he was treated at the hospital for facial fractures. Wild did not know the name of the ranger he said injured him.

When questioned about Wild’s claims, a senior park official acknowledged Tuesday that an incident had occurred and that Wild had been injured.

Len Bobinchok, deputy superintendent for Acadia National Park, said that an investigator based out of the National Park Service’s Philadelphia office is expected to arrive at Acadia today to begin looking into the incident. Whenever allegations of excessive police force arise at any NPS property, it is protocol to have an NPS law enforcement official from outside that property investigate the claims, he said.

“That immediately prompts an investigation by our Washington office,” Bobinchok said. “The intent is to do this quickly while the incident is fresh in everyone’s mind.”

Rangers went to the top of Day Mountain after they received a complaint about a “large party” happening there, according to Bobinchok. They found about 45 people there. Some fled into the woods, he said. The rangers issued several citations related to underage drinking and possession of marijuana, he said.

Bobinchok said Rangers Jim Lyon and Lou Jahrling were the first to arrive at the scene. More rangers showed up later, he said. Inquiries for rangers on Tuesday were directed to Bobinchok, who declined to comment on Wild’s claim that he was assaulted and injured by a ranger. He said to do so would be to speculate about what happened before the NPS investigation of the incident is complete.

“Until the investigation is complete, we won’t know all the facts on either side,” he said. “That’s why we’ve got the investigation.”

Wild, a summer resident on MDI whose most recent permanent address is Portland, Ore., and others on the hike dispute that it was a party or that anyone ran when the rangers showed up.

“It’s a social event. Nothing dangerous happens,” said Emma Holder, who worked at the Jordan Pond House the previous four years. She lives in Austin, Texas, now, she said, but came back to Maine on Sunday to see family and friends. She hiked up the mountain after others had headed up so she could catch up with friends she hadn’t seen since last summer.

She said she saw a ranger throw Wild to the ground.

“It was really confusing and scary,” she said. “People were crying. People were very upset.”

Bobinchok said he did not know how many rangers are assigned to Acadia National Park, but pointed out they are accredited law enforcement officials who carry firearms. He said rangers often respond to complaints about parties in the park’s two campgrounds that usually involve young people. He said the size of the late-night gathering on Day Mountain that led to the incident was the largest he could recall.

Joel Perkins, 28, is Wild’s supervisor and a year-round resident of Seal Harbor. He said he has organized the annual moonlight hike for six years now and never has had any problems.

Perkins said there are three things he tells other Jordan Pond House employees before they go on the hike: Everyone has to be quiet on the lower part of the trail, which runs past several homes in the village of Seal Harbor; no one under the age of 21 should carry or consume alcohol; and everyone has to be on time to work in the morning.

“It’s a very docile group of people,” Perkins said. “We always do it in July or August.”

Perkins said 38 people were on this year’s hike – a number he is sure of because he likes to keep track of how many come each year. Several hikers carried and consumed beer, he said.

After the group had been at the top of Day Mountain for about an hour, two law enforcement rangers appeared, he said, and immediately started yelling profanities as they gave orders. They told everyone to sit down and to produce their forms of identification, he said.

Everyone was told to leave the bags in one area and to sit in another, Perkins said. After a few minutes, as the rangers were checking IDs, people asked if they could go pee in the woods and were told that they could not, he said.

“The rangers were getting more and more upset, which was upsetting our [hiking] crew,” Perkins said.

One woman asked to be allowed to go pee and was told in strong terms to sit down, Perkins said. She took exception to the rangers’ tone and said, “I’m not a dog.”

This is when one ranger forcibly threw her to the ground, according to Wild and Perkins. Wild’s response to this – “That’s no way to treat a lady!” – resulted in his being thrown to the ground and knocked unconscious, they said.

Perkins and others said that even though Wild had been knocked unconscious and was bleeding, the rangers were dismissive of his injuries and would not let anyone check Wild to see how badly he was hurt. They said the rangers shook Wild to try to wake him up, which some worried might hurt Wild more.

“It took my friends begging them to call an ambulance before they did,” Wild said.

More rangers showed up after the alleged assaults, according to people familiar with the incident, and after a few more hours of checking IDs and examining bags, everyone else was allowed to leave except for one person.

Katherine Junkert – the woman who said, “I’m not a dog,” according to other hikers – was arrested on charges of disorderly conduct, failure to obey a lawful order, and being under the influence of alcohol in the park, according to Bobinchok.

David Woodside, president of the company that runs the Jordan Pond House, said Tuesday that the hike is not a company event; it is something employees of the restaurant have always organized and done on their own.

He said Acadia Corp., which also owns and operates retail shops elsewhere in the park and in downtown Bar Harbor, hopes the NPS investigation will accurately sort out what happened on Day Mountain. He said Jordan Pond House employees are expected to comply with park regulations when they are in the park, either as restaurant employees or as park visitors.

“We’re always concerned about the welfare of our employees,” Woodside said. “At the same time, we place great value on a good working relationship with the National Park Service.”

Candy Grover, a Bar Harbor attorney and Holder’s mother, said she and her husband, Jon Holder, also a local attorney, were called by their daughter while people were still being detained on the mountain. Grover was critical of the way the rangers handled the situation.

“They chose to go up and brutalize a bunch of kids,” Grover said. “I think it’s incredibly incompetent. I find it totally outrageous and sad that it happened in the park.”

Jon Holder, who said he is Wild’s attorney, said that the park’s top officials will have to answer for what happened.

“They let these guys get out of control,” Jon Holder said. “Responsibility starts at the top.”

Wild said he has missed two days of work because of his injuries and that he’s likely to miss several more. He’s not sure what he will do or where he will go when the restaurant closes in the fall, he said, but has been thinking of joining the Peace Corps.

When asked what he would do until then, he said he will have to get more medical attention and that he is going to explore his legal options.

“Are you kidding?” Wild said. “Look at my face. I’m definitely going to pursue litigation.”

Several people showed up at a protest held Tuesday night at the Village Green in Bar Harbor to draw attention to the incident. Wild said at the protest that he had been served two summonses by rangers a few hours earlier, one for disorderly conduct and the other for interfering with agency functions.

btrotter@bangordailynews.net

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