Following a shooting incident involving a U.S. Border Patrol agent in Coventry, Vermont, on Monday, January 20, 2025, traffic is backed up at the US-Canada border in Stanstead, Quebec. (Chloe Jones/AP Photo)
In a case that has expanded to include homicides in several states, prosecutors were scheduled to argue Thursday that a woman from Washington state should stay in prison in relation to the death of a U.S. Border Patrol agent.
Teresa Youngblut, 21, is charged with federal firearms in connection with Agent David Maland’s death on January 20. She is charged with shooting at officers during a traffic stop in northern Vermont, which led to a shootout that claimed the life of her friend, Felix Bauckholt.
The gun used in the Vermont shooting was bought by a person of interest in the Dec. 31, 2022, shooting deaths of Richard and Rita Zajko in their Chester Heights home, Pennsylvania state police confirmed Wednesday. Additionally, according to a federal prosecutor’s court filing, Youngblut and the buyer had regular contact with a person who was arrested during the Pennsylvania investigation and is a person of interest in another California murder.
U.S. Attorney Michael Drescher did not elaborate, although at Youngblut’s detention hearing on Thursday, prosecutors might. Meanwhile, the ties have been somewhat clarified by police and court documents.
Requests for comment on the charges have not received a response from Youngblut’s lawyer.
In Pennsylvania, Jack LaSota is presently being charged with disorderly behavior and impeding police officers. Authorities will not say whether the accusations are connected to the Zajko killings, but according to court documents, when LaSota was caught 12 days later at a hotel approximately 10 miles (16 kilometers) from the killing scene, investigators were looking for a gun that had been used in two murders.
Additionally, LaSota has ties to some of the major figures in the California case.
According to the San Francisco Chronicle, LaSota and three other people were jailed in 2019 for demonstrating against an event organized by the Center for Applied Rationality during a camping retreat in Occidental. Two of the others, Jeffrey Leatham and Emma Borhanian, were charged in Vallejo, California, in 2022 with slashing their landlord with a sword. Curtis Lind, the landlord, was stabbed to death on January 17 but survived the November 2022 attack.
This week, Maximilian Snyder was charged with that murder. In Kirkland, Washington, a person with the same name applied for a marriage license with Teresa Youngblut in November. Snyder’s lawyer refrained from commenting on the accusations.
Although the buyer of the gun used in Vermont has not been publicly identified, federal authorities alerted firearms dealers to Michelle Jacqueline Zajko’s purchases and described her as a person of interest in the Vermont shooting, according to the VTDigger news site.
Michelle Zajko was registered to vote in 2016 at the same Pennsylvania home location as Richard and Rita Zajko, according to a public records website. A half-acre plot of land in Derby, Vermont, just a few miles (about 6 kilometers) from the Canadian border, was purchased by Michelle Zajko in 2021. The area is undeveloped, according to local records.