Man angered by river use faces charge

A Ferry County man who claims to own a section of the Kettle River faces a criminal charge for allegedly threatening to shoot nine people who were floating down the river this summer.

The river is public, and Orient resident Harold Honeycutt has no more ownership than the nine people he accused of trespassing, according to Ferry County Prosecutor James von Sauer.

Von Sauer charged Honeycutt with coercion in a July 3 incident in which Sheriff Pete Warner was nearby when Honeycutt allegedly threatened nine rafters who were enjoying a holiday weekend on the scenic river.

The charge is a gross misdemeanor, punishable by a year in jail and a $5,000 fine. Indirectly, the charge may address the question of who owns the river, because it accuses Honeycutt of trying to force people not to do something they have a right to do.

The case, filed Sept. 29 in Ferry County Superior Court, is on hold while Honeycutt undergoes chemotherapy for throat cancer. Honeycutt said he plans to fight the charge when the case goes to trial next March.

“This is all false,” Honeycutt told The Spokesman-Review. “I didn’t threaten nobody there, and wasn’t even down on the river the day they said I threatened people.”

Von Sauer said in court documents that the threats occurred on the same day Honeycutt called Sheriff Pete Warner to the Orient bridge over the Kettle River to complain about alleged trespassing and illegal parking.

The prosecutor said Kettle Falls resident Kim Edwards saw Warner talking to Honeycutt and approached Warner after Honeycutt left. Edwards told Warner he was waiting to pick up nine friends who were floating down the river.

Edwards told Warner he had warned his friends to stay on the Stevens County side of the river and to beware of Honeycutt, who lives on the Ferry County side. Warner agreed to wait for Edwards’ friends to arrive, von Sauer said in an affidavit.

Efforts to reach Edwards or the rafters for comment Thursday were unsuccessful.

Von Sauer said Edwards’ friends soon began arriving in groups and reported to Warner that Honeycutt had subjected them and their children to a barrage of profanity. They told the sheriff that Honeycutt brandished a gun and threatened to shoot them.

“All stated they were in fear of what Mr. Honeycutt would do with the firearm,” von Sauer wrote.

Honeycutt said that his meeting with Warner was a couple of days earlier and that the people he complained about had floated past the bridge 15 to 20 minutes before Warner arrived.

In any event, Honeycutt said, he made no threats anytime last summer.

“I haven’t had a rifle or a handgun on the river that whole summer,” he said. “We hadn’t had that much trouble with them (rafters) that summer.”

Honeycutt contends his problems with rafters began about four years ago when a group of them blocked his driveway to unload rafts. He said his sister had come to visit and, unable to get through, passed out for lack of the bottled oxygen she needs.

“I did threaten them then,” Honeycutt said. “I said, ‘If you people don’t get out of my way, I’m going to run over you.’ “

Since then, he said, “it’s just been a bunch of people going down the river and dropping their drawers and giving me the finger.”

About a half-dozen rafters have shot at him, Honeycutt claimed. Rafters have said it was Honeycutt who did the shooting.

Von Sauer intervened in August 2003, citing numerous complaints from rafters and boaters that Honeycutt brandished a gun and threatened to shoot them for trespassing. Von Sauer issued an opinion that the river is public.

Shortly after that, Honeycutt tacked no-trespassing signs on a downed tree that blocked the river. He and von Sauer each say the other backed down in the legal tussle that followed.

Von Sauer charged Honeycutt in September 2003 with conducting an illegal hydraulic project. The prosecutor said he dropped the charge when Honeycutt removed the tree.

Honeycutt said he removed his signs and moved the tree back to where it originally fell into the river, so that it no longer blocked the waterway.

Honeycutt bases his claim to the river on a 1925 Stevens County Superior Court case that said the shallow river was unnavigable and therefore private. He said a Spokane attorney agrees with him that the old ruling is still valid.

Von Sauer says the river clearly is navigable, and dismisses the old court case as a historical artifact. The case was never upheld in an appellate court to give it value as a precedent in other cases, he said.

“As far as I am concerned, that is an open case,” von Sauer said.

Honeycutt accuses von Sauer of a vendetta that threatens private property rights all along the river.

Von Sauer said the Kettle River situation differs from that of the Little Spokane River in Spokane County, where recreational users also have clashed with property owners. Private ownership of the smaller Spokane County stream has been upheld on appeal, von Sauer said.