WILLMAR -- The pre-trial hearing for Scott Wagar, the rural Willmar man charged in a homecoming incident that included spraying teens with a squirt gun filled with water and fox urine, has been continued to Feb. 3.
Montevideo attorney Doug Kluver has taken the case on a pro bono basis and sought the continuance in Kandiyohi County District Court, Wagar said Tuesday afternoon. Wagar had been scheduled to appear before Judge Donald M. Spilseth at 2:30 p.m. Tuesday.
Wagar had been urged by a local attorney to seek legal help, he said, adding that Kluver called him Tuesday and offered to take the case free of charge. Wagar added that he is in the early stages of investigating civil action against the teens who came to his property last fall.
The goal, he said, is stopping homecoming action against him and his property this fall. "Somehow, we have to get parents to say, 'my kids are not going to do that.'"
Wagar faces charges of fifth-degree assault, theft and disorderly conduct for the Sept. 16 incident. The allegations include that he sprayed the teens with water and fox urine, got into a wrestling match with one of the teens and demanded $100 for a cell phone he found after the incident.
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According to the criminal complaint, Wagar reported to the county sheriff on Sept. 17 he had been in an altercation with another person near his property east of Willmar, and that he possibly had broken the person's finger. He said he was fed up with his house being toilet-papered and had taken matters into his own hands. He was out along his property line the night before, between 10:30 and 11 p.m., and observed 15 to 20 people running toward his place through a soybean field. His observation was made through night vision goggles. He said he told the group to leave and sprayed them with a super-soaker squirt gun filled with water and fox urine. While this was happening, he said, someone grabbed him from behind and they struggled with each other.
Later, a Sheriff's Office detective received a tip from a 16-year-old teenager who was in the group of people who had walked toward Wagar's property by following a drainage ditch and walking through the field. The teen said he was sprayed by the squirt gun and thought the liquid was human urine. The teen said he grabbed the squirt gun, and Wagar grabbed him and they struggled until another person started choking him and someone threatened to break his finger. He was able to free himself.
In a Dec. 16 interview with the Tribune, Wagar said that was about the same time as the deputy arrived. He and his son later surveyed what was left behind after the incident. They found 55 intact rolls of toilet paper, four and one-half dozen eggs, a bag of plastic forks and -- most alarming to them -- two screwdrivers and broken drumsticks with sharp ends.
They also found the cell phone. Wagar says he tracked down the owner and talked with his father. Wagar was asking for $100 in damages to his place and the neighboring fields, which had hundreds of dollars worth of crop loss because the group trampled the soybeans. He later turned the phone over to law enforcement.
