One Brother Injured, One Charged In Gunfight With Deputy Father Also Faces Charges; Bulletproof Vest Saved Officer

A father and his two sons from Oregon couldn’t get rid of an unwanted tenant fast enough Sunday.

So, authorities said, they tossed her belongings into a pile and set them on fire.

That conflagration preceded a gunbattle Sunday night 14 miles north of Sandpoint near Samuels that left a 21-year-old Eugene, Ore., resident and a Bonner County sheriff’s deputy wounded.

Deputy John Givens, 36, was released from a nearby hospital Sunday after a gap in the flesh of one of his arms was stitched closed. A bullet had passed through the arm and had lodged in his bulletproof vest.

“It probably would have killed him if he hadn’t been wearing” the vest, Bonner County Sheriff Chip Roos said.

Suspect Reyhan Higgins is recovering from a shotgun wound suffered when officers returned fire. Doctors dug at least seven pieces of shot from Higgins’ thigh.

His brother, Ian E. Higgins, 23, was charged Monday with aggravated battery on a peace officer, a crime that carries a penalty of up to 30 years in prison.

Their father, Steven T. Higgins, who was unarmed, was released on misdemeanor charges of obstructing justice.

Paula R. Koibu, a tenant in the Samuels-area home, called authorities Sunday complaining that three men were torching her possessions while she was trying to move.

The men told her she was to have left, long ago, the small two-story house she had rented, Roos said. Two of them were armed and had shot her dog, she told deputies.

Three deputies and an Idaho State Police officer drove the rutted road past the eclectic split-level homes and run-down shacks that make up the neighborhood. They parked 50 feet away and approached the men around the fire.

When Givens said he was a sheriff’s deputy, “the people there just opened fire,” Roos said. Givens was hit immediately and fired back, apparently hitting Reyhan Higgins.

Investigators still are trying to piece together details and what motivated the shooting. They have found no wounded dog. Even the dispute between Koibu and the Higgins family is unclear.

Bonner County has no record of property owned by any members of the Higgins family.

“They were claiming they had bought it,” said detective John Valdez. “She was claiming she had a couple more days.”

Ian Higgins told a judge Monday he had moved to Idaho from Eugene at the end of October.

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