‘He was my son’: Leech Lake tribal chair mourns loss in fatal law enforcement shooting

LEECH LAKE RESERVATION, Minn. — Mourners gathered for a vigil Wednesday evening at the scene of a fatal law enforcement shooting that wounded a sheriff’s deputy and killed a man on Sunday.

The man who died, 37-year-old James Walter Weyaus, was an enrolled member of the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe and the foster son of the Leech Lake tribal chair.

“I had him in my home since he was a young boy, and he aged out of foster care after 18, but he still stayed in our home along with his brother,” Chair Faron Jackson Sr. told the Minnesota Star Tribune at the vigil.

A Cass County deputy, who has not been identified, was shot in the upper thigh in an exchange of gunfire Sunday and airlifted to a hospital in Fargo. He was released the next day. Details of the encounter, including the deputy’s name, have not yet been released by the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension.

“We’re optimistic for a full recovery,” Jim Stuart, executive director of the Minnesota Sheriffs’ Association, said in an interview.

Cass County Sheriff Bryan Welk said in a statement that deputies responded to a 911 call reporting a shooting shortly before 5 p.m. near homes in Turtle Lake Township in rural Walker. He said they attempted to make contact on Onigum Road NW. with a man who fled on foot.

Jackson said at the vigil Wednesday that he didn’t know what led to the shooting, but he said he wouldn’t define his son’s life by his death.

“He started his journey from here and I put his shoes there so he can pick up and start walking again, walk to where he has to be at now,” Jackson said.

Jackson treated Weyaus “as my biological child ... and he called me dad,” he said. “So that was a real honor in itself. I felt really lucky to have him call me that special name.”

Weyaus had been grieving the loss of his biological mother who died Oct. 10. Jackson’s wife also died in March, so Weyaus was mourning the loss of both his mothers.

“They had a lot of love for him,” Jackson said. “He’ll be remembered that way, you know, not the way he started his journey, not the way being shot by a policeman. That doesn’t define him.”

Spiritual adviser Darrell Kingbird led mourners in healing songs and prayer. They were each handed a pinch of tobacco, which they placed into a spirit fire after the vigil.

“It’s really hard; we’re still grieving,” Jackson said, “2025 has been a tough year for our family and other families as well, too. So we do the best, trying to do the best we can to stay together.”

Nakia Buck of Minneapolis, a close friend of Weyaus, said she spoke with him the day before the shooting.

“The last time I talked to him, he was out hunting,” Buck said.

She said Weyaus was living in Onigum with his siblings after recently moving back home from Florida. He has a criminal record there and a lengthy criminal history in Minnesota, Wisconsin and North Dakota.

“I know he’s been fighting, you know, his mental health was really bad,” Buck said. “He was trying to do better in his life. I know everybody says that, but he really was, but everything he did in his past just kept haunting him.”