Good Samaritan couple shot to death on Montana roadside

By Laura Zuckerman

(Reuters) - A man has been charged with murder in the roadside shooting deaths of a Montana couple who authorities say stopped to help the suspect after they spotted him apparently stranded in a broken-down truck at the edge of their Indian reservation.

The accused gunman, Jesus Deniz, 18, was scheduled to make his initial court appearance on Friday before a federal magistrate in Billings, north of the Crow Indian Reservation where the slain couple resided as members of the tribe.

Jason Shane, 51; his wife, Tana, 47; and their daughter, Jorah, 24, encountered Deniz on Thursday, and stopped their car to offer him help, believing he was a stranded motorist, an FBI agent said in a sworn affidavit.

According to the affidavit, citing the daughter's account of the incident, the suspect stepped out of his truck, pointed a rifle at the family and ordered them from their car, then demanded money, which they said they did not have.

The gunman ordered the family to walk away from their vehicle, and they were doing so when the daughter heard a gunshot and turned to see her father lying on the road, the FBI said. The daughter tried to run away, then heard her mother scream as both women were shot.

The daughter survived with bullet wounds to her head and back, but her parents were killed, the FBI said. Deniz drove off in the family's car and was arrested on Thursday afternoon in neighboring Wyoming, according to the affidavit.

The FBI said in its account that the suspect later confessed to the shootings, telling investigators he opened fire on the three victims because they were too slow in offering to help him and "because the daughter laughed at him."

The case was brought in federal court because the victims were shot on Indian land.

(Reporting by Laura Zuckerman in Salmon, Idaho; Editing by Steve Gorman and Mohammad Zargham)