On a weekday afternoon, Helen Fenn was traveling through Owyhee Junction on her way to her home in Nyssa when a bullet struck her white Chevrolet’s rear window.
She was one of the first victims of a frenzied shooting spree in the rural Malheur County village south of Nyssa, though the Nyssa resident was unaware of it at the time.
On Wednesday, January 22, a man who was locked in his house shot hundreds of rounds at houses, cars, and businesses throughout the course of the following few hours.
More than 100 police, firefighters, and medical personnel evacuated and subsequently cordoned off the village as a result of his activities, sparking one of the biggest law enforcement reactions in recent eastern Oregon history.
Police discovered that Joel E. Brousseau, 58, had committed suicide shortly before midnight, marking the conclusion of the story.
Additionally, it ended a family’s years-long battle to support a guy who was in great distress.
Life as a loner
In an interview, Jordan Valley resident Jay Brousseau, Brousseau’s brother, gave information on his younger brother’s life, and Brousseau’s daughter gave the Enterprise information in a written statement. She requested to remain anonymous.
Brousseau was the youngest of four sons and grew up in Oxnard, California.
As a child, Brousseau was a recluse who liked spending time in nature rather than with other people.
After a childhood buddy died by suicide, he never really recovered. When Brousseau was a teenager, his childhood friend passed away. Later, an automobile accident claimed the life of another close buddy. He was impacted by both deaths.
One of the few full-time jobs he had for around five years was with Ventura County’s sanitation authority.
According to his daughter, he was a multi-talented individual who spent his entire life working in construction.
He relocated to Meridian, Idaho, in 2000, but eventually made the decision to relocate once more.
His daughter claimed that he taught her gun safety since he loved the outdoors and was an enthusiastic hunter and fisherman.
The daughter claimed that he was a very good marksman. On a dime, he could aim and shoot (and not miss). She claimed that he had always been a law-abiding citizen and a responsible gun owner.
According to his brother, Brousseau stayed on the Oregon coast for around half a year. In 2019, he purchased a 1940s home on Owyhee Avenue, three doors west of the intersection with Oregon 201, according to Malheur County records. Brousseau, a master artisan, renovated the house.
According to his brother, he was living off an inheritance that had almost run out recently. He was living on credit from month to month.
According to his brother, Brousseau suffered from mental illness, and throughout the past three years, his paranoia has grown.
According to his daughter, my father never mentioned anything insane before relocating to Nyssa.
When Brousseau seemed to recognize that he needed treatment for a potential mental condition, there were rays of hope.
Jay Brousseau always stood behind his brother.
Buddy, let’s go, I said, the brother remarked. Right here, right now, I’ll take you.
Even though he was alone in his community, he occasionally showed friendliness.
Fenn thought back to her one encounter with Brousseau.
She was plucking weeds in her sister’s yard next door to Brousseau last summer. He promised to get rid of the weeds for her if she threw them into his land.
She responded, “It was nice of him to do that for me.”
However, Jay Brousseau stated that family members needed to exercise caution due to his brother’s instability and illness. His brother’s behavior could change at any time, and he would lose it.
Brousseau threatened to kill his brother last Christmas.
He began to have delusions about his neighbors plotting against him. Conversations with his sibling were dominated by that fear.
The disturbed guy informed the Malheur County Sheriff’s Office of his suspicions almost two years ago.
Brousseau informed his brother and daughter that he had reported trespassing on his land by members of the neighborhood. He claimed that the police informed him that the allegations were unfounded.
The daughter claimed that each time I phoned him, he would tell me the same tale about various events in which he would leave his house and return to find everything in disorder rather than how he had left it.
According to his brother, Brousseau believed that meant no one would assist him.
Jay stated that he didn’t like that at all. That’s most likely what set it off.
He wrote a letter to his daughter in Meridian exactly two years before to the shooting day, hinting at his plans after his encounter with the sheriff’s office.
It was impossible to determine the exact contents of the letter, but according to his brother, it detailed Brousseau’s plans for Owyhee Junction.
According to the daughter, he wrote about people violating his privacy and only asked assistance in catching them.
Brousseau accumulated hundreds of rounds of ammunition for his powerful semi-automatic rifle prior to the shooting. Among his other weapons was a shotgun.
He pushed furniture up against his front and side doors, blocking access to his house. He covered the windows with sheets.
Then he loosened up.
Quiet community disrupted
On Oregon 201, which runs north-south close to the Idaho border, Owyhee Junction is a significant intersection.
The intersection, which is the turnoff for campers, hikers, and other recreationalists wishing to travel west to Lake Owyhee, is situated between Nyssa and Adrian.
Its focal point is the Rock Store, which provides tourists with groceries and last-minute gasoline. Across the street is Rippin Lips Tackle, a bait store. The state highway and Owyhee Avenue, where Brousseau resided, are lined with a dozen residences and businesses.
Tyler Simpson was serving clients at the store he purchased in 2022 in the middle of the afternoon. He upgraded the gas pumps and added an outdoor patio with a tap house to a business that had been operating since 1932.
At around 2:15 p.m., he saw the transformer outside was smoking and he and the staff went outside the business.
From his house across the street and roughly 250 feet from the store, Brousseau started shooting at them. In the last four years, the shooter had only visited the store once.
Simpson’s head was struck by a single bullet.
He said that I was directly in his line of sight.
The store’s walk-in cooler was also hit by bullets.
Simpson claimed that before police evacuated them, he, his patrons, and employees all fled to the opposite side of the building to seek shelter, where they would be held down for approximately an hour.
The passing motorist, Fenn, joined them in their flight for safety.
She was driving home after taking her golden lab Tango for a walk, when she pulled up to the stop sign at the highway crossroads on Owyhee Avenue.
She thought it was exploding rubble in a burn pile when she heard a quick popping sound.
Unaware that a bullet had entered her car through the rear glass and exited through the passenger side windshield, Fenn continued on her way home. When she shut the door, the rear window broke, so she drove back to The Rock Store to voice her displeasure.
She struck an active shooting site with her car.
911 dispatchers were fielding a series of calls on the incident in the interim. At 2:18 p.m., the first was logged.
The woman on the phone said, “There is a shooting going on.” The address is Owyhee Avenue.
The dispatcher was informed that no one had been hurt yet, that the car had been shot, and that there was no power in the vicinity.
Over the next five minutes, more calls were received, and troopers from the Oregon State Police and a sheriff’s deputy responded.
Just seventeen minutes after the initial report, a deputy showed up, then troopers and more deputies quickly followed. The Rock Store employees indicated where the shooter was.
Brousseau reportedly strolled throughout his home, shooting out windows as he went. A woman cowered behind a washing machine for protection before being rescued after he pumped an estimated 200 bullets into the house to his east.
The windows of cars, trucks, and trailers were broken by his shooting. He fired at other establishments, including the bait store and Martin & Martin Builders’ store 700 feet distant.
A man at a house west of Brousseau was safely removed by police and medical personnel. The man was immobilized by illness and had to be carried out. To protect themselves and the man, police utilized an armored vehicle.
The neighborhood filled with officers and drained of residents as more police came. Far from the location, all inbound and outbound traffic was stopped. About half a mile north of the intersection, a command post was positioned outside an onion shed.
Shortly after 3 p.m., according to authorities, Brousseau opened fire on police officers.
By that time, assistance was arriving from all around eastern Oregon and Malheur County. The armored truck was sent by the Baker County Sheriff’s Office. To reach the site, troopers from Burns and La Grande began traveling 130 miles.
Treasure Valley Paramedics positioned workers and Ontario Fire and Rescue sent assistance, including its drone.
After an unidentified officer and Brousseau exchanged gunfire at approximately 5 p.m., deputies from Baker and Malheur counties drove two armored vehicles up to Brousseau’s house in an attempt to trap him inside.
At approximately 5:30 p.m., police arrived at Jay Brousseau’s house and asked him to record a phone message for his brother. Jay Brousseau had never heard of the shooting until now.To persuade the shooter to give up, it was intended to be broadcast at the residence.
Brousseau was informed in the message that his brothers cherished him and wished to spend time and go fishing with him. Whether the message was played or not is uncertain.
They tried to convince the shooter’s daughter to videotape something similar.
Using a sophisticated armored vehicle that had to travel over 400 miles from Salem to reach Owyhee Junction, the highly-trained SWAT team from the Oregon State Police took action to put an end to the gathering later that evening.
The troopers used the vehicle to smash windows and doors. To get video of what was happening inside the house, they sent out robots and drones.
The team discovered Brousseau dead at 11:30 p.m., having evidently killed himself with a gunshot wound.
An estimated 300 gunshot casings were scattered throughout the house.
The 100 police officers and first responders who had been on the site soon started to depart. Homeowners were permitted to return.
Additionally, state police officers spent the next day gathering evidence from Brousseau’s residence and the area surrounding the intersection.
Until the power was eventually restored on Saturday, January 25, the Rock Store remained closed.
According to Travis Johnson, the sheriff of Malheur County, the incident sparked the biggest law enforcement reaction he could think of in eastern Oregon in recent memory.
Neither residents nor first responders were hurt.
We were fortunate that nobody was harmed despite the amount of gunfire that entered homes and buildings where people were present, Johnson added. It seems like a miracle to me.
This report was contributed to by editor Les Zaitz.
The email address of Steven Mitchell is [email protected].
Help is available if you or someone you know is thinking of ending their life. For discreet, round-the-clock assistance, text or call 988 or go to 988lifeline.org.
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