HOLYSHIT. NOW WE KNOW

Lewis County Prosecutor declines to file charges By Lynnette Hoffman Published: April 25, 2023

This past week, the Lewis County Prosecutor Jonathan Meyer announced that he will not be filing criminal charges against Ethan Asbach, the young man who has admitted firing a shot in the dark killing both Aron Christensen and his dog Buzzo. People following the story have been treated to Lewis County Sheriff Snaza and Lewis County Prosecutor Meyer pointing fingers at each other for the botched investigation of Aron's death with the Snaza saying essentially "nothing to see here" and the Prosecutor saying essentially the Keystone Cops would have done a better job.

This is the whole story.

The Lewis County Sheriff's Deputy first on the scene thought the bullet hole in Aron was caused by a stick. Needless to say, that conclusion is hard to swallow considering both a dog and a man were lying dead. Either an inordinate lack of curiosity, incompetence, or direction from a superior seems to have affected the investigation.

The next chapters of the story is where the pathologist reported the desire of Snaza to influence medical findings. This is not the responsibility of the sheriff and he should give no direction to an independent pathologist.

What the public has not been told is that there are apparent connections between the Sheriff's Office and the shooter's relatives.

The Sheriff's Office has been buying all-terrain vehicles from a relative of the shooter. The most recent purchase order was placed in May 2022 with delivery being in November of 2022. The dealership is owned by Ethan's grandfather where Ethan worked until August of 2022. The Sheriff Department's Search and Recovery Operations Unit was disbanded in or before 2020, long before the 2022 purchase. The obvious question is why was this purchase made? One possible connection is Sheriff's Captain Rick Van Wyck who was active in the re-election campaign of Sheriff Snaza and whose nephew sold the vehicles on commission to the Sheriff's Office. The connections may be pure happenstance, but the oddities in how the Christensen homicide investigation proceeded certainly foster suspicion especially when Snaza reportedly tried to influence the pathologist's report in a manner favorable to both his department and the shooter.

The forensic pathologist investigating the death is reported to have said that Sheriff Snaza attempted to influence the report to follow Ethan's claim that Christensen was dead when he found him, creating no need to call for medical help.

The pathologist was not swayed, and reported that Aron was alive and may have lived for hours after having been shot. This finding was, of course, devastating to the family who were left with the fear that Aron had been left to die.

Once interconnections between the Sheriff, Sheriff's Captain Van Wyck and the business dealings of the Sheriff's Office came to light, the obvious question is whether or not these connections influenced the conduct of the Christensen homicide investigation. We know that the homicide was not reported for hours.