13-year-old warrant symbolizes tribal distrust toward white criminal justice

On a cool spring morning one Sunday in 2003, a beat-up brown van drove off the highway about a mile south of New Underwood, vaulted up an embankment and slammed down onto a driveway.

When paramedics arrived, they found a badly injured 11-year-old girl in the driver’s seat.

Her 13-year-old brother was also injured, as was her mother, 37-year-old Lori Ann Mestes, of Dupree, who authorities believe had been drinking cans of Budweiser during a two-hour trip from Pine Ridge while the girl drove. Mestes’ boyfriend, 37-year-old Paul Anthony Clifford, also of Dupree, died of blunt-force trauma. None of them wore seat belts, investigators said.

http://rapidcityjournal.com/news/local/year-old-warrant-symbolizes-tribal-distrust-toward-white-criminal-justice/article_4bf696bc-b351-5fd8-8be2-6bd22d8c7cb9.html