LAUTENSCHLAGER TO SEEK REELECTION
Tuesday, December 28th, 2004 -- 9:14 AM
Attorney General Peg Lautenschlager told a state newspaper yesterday she plans to seek re-election to a second term in 2006, and she will personally prosecute the case against a man accused of killing six hunters and wounding two others. Lautenschlager, interviewed by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, said she would pursue another four-year term despite going through a year in which she has been convicted of drunken driving, treated for breast cancer and required to pay a $250 forfeiture for misuse of a state vehicle. Lautenschlager said she would handle the preliminary hearing Wednesday of Chai Soua Vang of St. Paul, Minn., a truck driver facing six counts of murder in the Nov. 21 hunter shootings in Sawyer County. Vang told investigators the other hunters confronted him about trespassing on private property and called him racial slurs, and one shot at him first, according to court records. Two survivors said Vang opened fire on them after he was told to leave the land. Lautenschlager's appearance as a prosecutor in the courtroom will be her first since she was elected in 2002. Lautenschlager said she wants to prosecute Vang because of her "personal interest" in cases that involve crimes against people. She last prosecuted the case of a kidnapper of a 12-year-old girl in the late 1990s, when she was a U.S. attorney.Feel free to contact us with questions and/or comments.