It’s been three weeks since Stephanie Bearstail died under suspicious circumstances on the Wind River Indian Reservation, and the 18-year-old’s family is mourning her as they wait for answers from federal investigators. Bearstail was a passionate softball player and determined student eager to graduate high school and enter college — she had recently expressed interest in becoming a radiologist, her parents Nikki and Kevin Ferris told WyoFile in a phone interview this week. As a senior, she was already taking courses at Central Wyoming College.  Their only daughter was also a certified goofball, a little boss of the house and her three brothers, and a bright light in the lives of the family and many others on the reservation.  “Even we were surprised how many people knew her,” Vikki Ferris said. “We knew of her friends, but we didn’t know how many she had.”  On March 15, those friends and others — as many as 200 people, according to news reports — walked to a fence line along the side of Wyoming 137, a road that cuts across the reservation, running from near the Wind River Casino outside Riverton west to Fort Washakie. That’s the area where authorities say Bearstail somehow exited a moving vehicle on a windy March night.  A memorial at a roadside outside Riverton that investigators have connected to the death of Stephanie Bearstail, who is believed to have exited a moving SUV amid circumstances that remain a mystery to the public. (Andrew Graham/WyoFile) At the demonstration, Bearstail’s supporters wore red — the color that has become a symbol for the issue of missing and murdered indigenous women that plagues communities on and off the reservation. They carried signs that read “Justice for Steph,” some of which still hung weeks later on the barbed wire fence that threads between the sage brush.  Bearstail’s death, her mother said, “just blindsided all of us.”  The Ferrises declined to share details, saying they do not want to publicly reveal information that could complicate the job of investigators. But they have reason to believe their daughter was a victim of violence, they said.  “The main thing that I think of every day is I just wish somebody would come out and tell the truth about what happened,” Nikki said. “I don’t understand how anyone could know what happened and not say anything.”  Bearstail grew up and lived her entire life in Fort Washakie, where her father was involved in law enforcement and today is a judge on the Wind River Tribal Court.  The night of March 4, Bearstail did not return home by her 10:30 p.m. curfew. The parents could remember only one other time their lively but studious daughter had been late for her curfew, they told WyoFile. They grew worried, and within an hour, left home to look for her.  The parents tracked their daughter’s phone location, which placed her in the area between Riverton and the small reservation community of Arapaho. “She did need help, and we were trying to find her,” her mother said.  On the drive, they received word she had been hospitalized, and so they headed to SageWest Hospital in Riverton. They were able to spend time with Bearstail before she died, but their daughter was unable to speak or share what happened to her, they said. The Wyoming Highway Patrol, which maintains a list of highway fatalities from around the state, published an entry to the list about a week after Bearstail’s death, according to news reports. The entry states: “An unknown SUV was traveling westbound on Rendezvous Road. The SUV passenger allegedly jumped out of the vehicle while it was in motion for unknown reasons.”  The entry does not say where investigators learned of the allegation that Bearstail jumped from the SUV. Authorities haven’t identified the driver. The Wyoming Highway Patrol directed WyoFile to the FBI for comment on the case. The FBI has said only that the case remains under investigation. The Fremont County Coroner’s office is conducting the autopsy, which hasn’t been finalized, a representative of that office said this week.  Using the limited information from the highway patrol fatality database, news organizations ran headlines stating that Bearstail “allegedly jumped” from the car to her death. Those reports disturbed the family, the Ferrises said, because taken in isolation, the information suggests Bearstail was responsible for her own death.  The headlines, Nikki said, served “to deflect off what happened to her.” But Bearstail’s community appears dedicated to keeping focus on her case and on the issue of domestic violence, which they believe led to her death. Other community events are in the works, the Ferrises told WyoFile.  Native American women fall prey to violence, murders and unexplained deaths at disproportionally higher rates compared to other demographics in the United States.  Many of the cases go unsolved, and reformers have pointed to the complicated jurisdictional nature of reservations — where local, state, federal and tribal law enforcement sometimes overlap in areas that are often economically depressed and, in the West, geographically isolated — as leading to a lack of accountability for perpetrators of violence. That does not appear to be the case here, as the FBI swiftly took control of the investigation. “In this case, the FBI, they were [at the crime scene] that morning,” Nikki said. “They got involved quickly.” Bearstail was the second oldest of the couple’s children. Her younger brothers, ages 15 and 13, have tried to return to school, but on some days have had to go home or haven’t been up for going at all, their mother said.  “They’re not doing OK,” Nikki said. “It’s really hard.” Since her daughter’s death, Nikki has made a steady stream of posts to social media, calling for justice, expressing her raw grief and remembering her daughter. There are videos of Bearstail running track, and of her dancing — full of life.  As the Ferrises have received messages sharing swirling rumors about the night Bearstail died, they’ve implored people to take what they know to the FBI. But to date, all the family has been told by officials is that an investigation is active, the parents said.  The FBI “said it would take time,” Nikki said in the March 25 interview. To her knowledge, “they’re still out there investigating,” she said.  In a statement to WyoFile sent Wednesday evening, an FBI spokesperson for the Denver Field Office said the agency “appreciate[s] public interest in this incident and encourage[s] anyone with information to contact the Bureau of Indian Affairs/Wind River Police or the FBI.” The agency could not offer a time frame for when it would conclude the investigation, the statement read. “We methodically and thoroughly address every element of the incident,” spokesperson Vikki Migoya said.  The post ‘Come out and tell the truth’: Parents of teen who died outside Riverton wait for answers appeared first on WyoFile . ...read more read less