When Dusty Casey, then 42, stumbled across the body of a man who had just been shot near the Yuba River in northern California, she knew right away he was dead.
“The blood was already coagulating,” Dusty recalled when I interviewed her this month. “His heart was no longer pumping.”
Dusty realized that a man she’d encountered minutes earlier must have been the killer.
A troubling encounter
Dusty’s journey into the remote location started earlier that day, Thursday, June 12, 2014, when her son Tyrell called and said he needed a tow. He’d been having fun in the backcountry with his “Baja Bug” offroad vehicle when he managed to get himself stuck.
Dusty and her mom climbed into a pickup truck and headed out, bound for an area called Parks Bar, where the Yuba River widens into a broad sandbar that during Gold Rush days attracted hundreds of prospectors.
Dusty, who lived with her husband and family in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, knew the area well. “There’s lot of four-wheeling down there,” she explained. “River rafting, gold panning.”
The Parks Bar area was also a favorite spot for Dusty and her family to go swimming in the summertime.
As Dusty and her mom approached the Yuba River, they chanced upon a pair of parked vehicles. One was a white Ford F-150 pickup with a Colorado license plate.
The other vehicle, a maroon-colored coupe driven by a young man with close-cropped hair, seemed out of place alongside the rough and rocky route.
As Dusty slowed her truck to a near-stop, the young man walked past, gave a quick glance, and then turned away. Dusty could see him reaching into the back of the white Ford pickup.
“I said to my mom, ‘He’s stealing stuff,’ Dusty recalled. “I was looking around for whoever owned the truck but I didn’t see anyone.”
A grim discovery
By the time Dusty and her mom reached the banks of the Yuba River, she’d met up with a friend of Tyrell’s who said not to worry about the Baja Bug because they were making progress in getting it unstuck.
Dusty and her mom decided to take a quick swim before driving home. About twenty minutes later, when they drove back out, the young man and his maroon-colored car were nowhere to be seen, but the white Ford pickup remained.
As Dusty drove by the pickup, her mom spotted someone lying under a tree – and something about the scene seemed off.
Dusty stopped her truck, she and her mom got out – and that’s when Dusty realized that the man had just been murdered.
“I noticed drag marks on the ground,” Dusty recalled. “I knew he’d been shot. There was blood coming out of his nose and ears.”
Dusty’s mom ran back to the truck, saying they should leave. But Dusty felt sure the killer wasn’t coming back. “I knew he was long gone.”
Even so, Dusty felt scared when Tyrell came down the hill and told her that earlier, he and his friend heard gunshots.
“I told him to get the hell out of here,” Dusty recalled.
A drug deal gone bad
Soon the scene was aswarm with law enforcement, and within hours they made an arrest.
Turned out the killer, Joseph Aaron Martin, then 22, panicked as he fled, driving so fast that he bottomed out on a rock and tore a hole in his car’s oil pan.
After Martin called for a tow truck, police connected the dots. Under questioning by investigators, the young man quickly caved.
According to Martin’s statement, the victim, Christopher Lawrence Russell, aged 33, of Boulder, Colorado, was a customer who bought black market marijuana.
After the two men got into an argument about a drug debt, Martin shot Russell six times in the face, neck, shoulder, arm – and one bullet to the back of Russell’s head.
Martin’s prior criminal record included grand theft. In 2013, he pleaded guilty to second degree murder and received a sentence of 15 years to life. He’s currently serving time at Avenal State Prison.
For Dusty Casey, who was a licensed EMT and certified nursing assistant when the murder occurred, her most vivid memory is a sense of regret.
“I wasn’t freaking out,” said Dusty. “I took his pulse but it wasn’t beating. I wanted to be able to help him. But I couldn’t.”
