Man jailed, banned from Yellowstone National Park after Old Faithful ‘stunt’

Posted 7/6/21

A 37-year-old man who donned a coonskin cap and carried a U.S. flag up to the edge of the Old Faithful geyser last year has been ordered to serve more than two weeks in jail. He’s also been …

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Man jailed, banned from Yellowstone National Park after Old Faithful ‘stunt’

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A 37-year-old man who donned a coonskin cap and carried a U.S. flag up to the edge of the Old Faithful geyser last year has been ordered to serve more than two weeks in jail. He’s also been barred from Yellowstone National Park for the next four years.

Aaron E. Merritt of Madison, Maine, received the sentence Thursday, after pleading guilty to a misdemeanor count of traveling in a thermal area. 

The incident occurred around 8:30 p.m. on July 7, 2020. In a statement, Ranger Kirsten Vitolins said she received a report that someone “wearing a racoon skin cap [and] holding an American flag had run out onto the thermal area and up to the cone of Old Faithful.”

When Vitolins reached the parking lot, she saw a man with a flag — later identified as Merritt — sitting on a bench in the geyser’s viewing area.

“By the time I caught up to him, he had re-entered the thermal area,” walking past signs warning to stay out, Vitolins wrote. Merritt made it about 50 feet off the boardwalk and was approaching the back of the Old Faithful cone when the ranger called him back.

“Merritt told me he went ‘way out there,’ but never got to the cone,” Vitolins wrote. She noted that the geyser wound up erupting within the next half-hour, about five minutes earlier than predicted.

“Yellowstone National Park has rules and regulations in place to protect park resources and help keep visitors safe,” Bob Murray, the acting U.S. Attorney for the District of Wyoming, said in a statement. “This case ended with federal charges and time in prison, but it could have been much worse. If Mr. [Merritt] had fallen through the thermal feature, he would have most likely lost his life.”

Merritt’s motivations were not clear from court records.

Federal prosecutors called the trespassing a “stunt to gain attention,” though internet searches indicate that Merritt drew little notice until federal officials highlighted the case in a Friday news release. 

The case remained pending for a year because Merritt failed to show up for court. Ranger Vitolins had issued a citation that required him to appear at the Yellowstone Justice Center in Mammoth Hot Springs on July 23, 2020. When Merritt didn’t appear, Magistrate Judge Mark Carman issued a warrant for his arrest, but he remained at large active for roughly 10 months.

The ranger’s statement says Merritt identified himself as a Michigan resident at the time of the trespassing, but he was eventually arrested in Maine in early June. A judge in Bangor, Maine, allowed him to be released on an unsecured bond — but with orders to show up in Mammoth on July 1.

At that hearing, Magistrate Carman imposed a 15-day jail sentence — crediting Merritt for the four days he’d already served in Maine — plus $240 in fines and fees and the four-year ban from the park.

Further details about Merritt’s sentence were not immediately available, as a clerk apparently uploaded the wrong judgment to the court’s electronic docketing system. It was an unrelated sentence for park visitor Nikki S. Hess, who was recently ordered to serve two days in jail and pay $540 for speeding 93 mph in one of Yellowstone’s 55 mph zones on May 3; Hess was also kicked out of the park for two years.

Both of those recent cases followed a June incident in which a 31-year-old Indiana man received two months in jail and a five-year ban for drunkenly causing a disturbance and fighting with park officials. Kyle F. Campbell reportedly became upset after a kayak guide determined he and his group were too intoxicated to go out on Yellowstone Lake. The U.S. Attorney’s Office also highlighted that case in a news release, with Acting U.S. Attorney Murray warning that “unruly and intoxicated behavior will only earn you a spot with the jailbirds rather than enjoying the beauty and adventure of Yellowstone.”

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