Name: Fort Peck
Tribes: Assiniboine
& Sioux
Population: 10,321
Native: 60%
Counties: Daniels,
Roosevelt, Sheridan,
Valley
Mary and Verle went to the hospital, where the tribal public safety director told them Sierra's leg had to be amputated. Tribal criminal investigator Ken Trottier was interviewing Sierra, they say they were told. They thought she was going to be all right but "they wouldn't let us see her," Mary says.
Two and a half hours later, a doctor told them Sierra had died.
"They came out and said, 'We did all we could.'" Mary fell to her knees sobbing, Verle held her and prayed. Even after Sierra was pronounced dead Mary and Verle say tribal police told them they couldn't see her body because it was considered evidence.
"It hurt me knowing that my daughter left this world without her mom and dad able to be there," Verle says.
The Follettes got no further information about Sierra's death until the following Monday. Police told them that after Mary had visited Sierra, the girls left Sierra's trailer and ended up at a house party two miles east of town with three off-duty tribal police officers, Terry Boyd Jr., Quincy Crow and Joey Chase. Though all three girls were under 21, the men gave them alcohol, according to police reports. After an argument erupted about sharing cigarettes, one of the men kicked Four Star out of the house. The girls asked for a ride back to town, but the men refused. So they began the trek along Highway 2, headed back to Poplar.
Mary says the girls told her that Four Star walked nearest the ditch, Sierra was in the middle and Wise Spirit was nearest to the two-lane road. The girls told police they were walking the white line that separates the shoulder from the highway, to see if they could do it. They told investigators that when a white SUV came toward them, they ran toward the ditch.
Four Star and Wise Spirit both declined to be interviewed for this story. "I feel in talking to them that they blame themselves," Mary says.
When the car that struck Sierra approached the girls, Wise Spirit ran away from the road, hitting Sierra's foot, causing her to trip, Mary says she told her. Sierra fell, her legs extending into the roadway. As she tried to get up, the SUV hit her.
Sierra's death certificate states the manner of death as homicide. Just below that, under cause of death, are four citations: multiple severe pelvic and lower extremity traumatic injuries, blood loss, pedestrian struck by motor vehicle, and vehicular manslaughter.
A toxicology report showed Sierra's blood alcohol level was .14. Traces of the prescription pain killer Meperidine and caffeine were also detected in her blood. The Follettes didn't get Sierra's death certificate until December. They were angry to see "alcohol ingestion" listed as a factor in her death. They claim Trottier was using it as an excuse to not do a more thorough investigation.
Last fall, Mary says, Phoebe Blount, a victim specialist with the FBI in Glasgow, showed up at Mary's office with two brown bags containing Sierra's jeans, shoes, shirt, belt, bra and underwear. Mary says Blount told her the FBI had closed the case and she wanted to destroy the evidence. "She wanted permission to burn my daughter's stuff. I said, 'That's not normal. I want it back,'" Mary says.
Blount said she cannot comment on the Follette case, but Eric Barnhart, an FBI supervising agent in the Billings office, explained that in all investigations that remain unprosecuted, evidence is either given back the owner or the victim's next of kin. If there is no owner or the relatives don't want the evidence, it's the FBI's practice to destroy the evidence by burning it because of biohazard reasons, he says.
"I can't speak of specifics," Barnhart says. He also declined to comment as to whether Sierra Follette's case is closed.
Her family says they were told it is and they can't understand that. "It's a homicide; they should never be closed," Verle says. "It's really a frustrating thing for us. We don't know where else to go."
Trottier, the supervisor of the criminal investigation unit for Fort Peck Tribes, says Sierra Follette's case is still open even though he says the FBI closed it.
"It's an active case, which with Fort Peck Tribes, it means we're still following any leads," Trottier says, while acknowledging they have not pursued any recently. "We haven't had anything new come in."