Children remain defiant in Idaho gun siege

Armed with rifles and a pack of wild dogs, a family of six children stayed in their ramshackle Idaho home for a third day, refusing to accept help from government officials they fear and distrust.

Sheriff’s deputies blocked off a dirt road near Sandpoint in northern Idaho and waited patiently yesterday, not wanting to provoke further paranoia from a family that had worked hard to cut itself off from the outside world. It was not clear whether the children were talking with them.

Alice Wallace, director of a community food centre, characterised the family of JoAnn and Michael McGuckin as ‘‘a normal family that has fallen on hard times.’’ The children are ‘‘great kids. They’re well-mannered, they’re polite, they’re respectful.’’

Now, she said: ‘‘They’re scared, I’m sure. Your dad dies a couple of weeks ago, and then your mother’s taken away from you - that would be a little unnerving, don’t you think?’’

McGuckin was buried last Friday and his wife was arrested on Tuesday on charges of injuring a child. After her arrest, deputies went to the house for the children, who were to be placed in state custody. But one of the boys spotted them, yelled ‘‘Get the guns!’’ and set the dogs loose.

‘‘I think they have been raised to be leery of government officials and maybe some law,’’ Wallace said Thursday.

The children - aged eight to 16 - have each other, rifles they know how to use and 27 half-wild dogs in a run-down home without water or electricity. They also have enough food to hold out for a while. A family friend picked up a 200-pound box of supplies for them at the food centre last Friday, Wallace said.

Authorities say they will simply wait and not rush the situation.

A longtime friend, Mary Peters, offered a 10-year-old photo of the McGuckins in happier times, smiling with five of their eight children. She said she was met with snarling dogs and a shotgun-toting family member the last time she stopped in to offer help.

‘‘They were thinking we were all their enemies,’’ Peters said.

The hard times began when Michael McGuckin, who had worked at a lumber mill, was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis several years ago. The Bonner County coroner attributed his May 12 death at age 61 to malnutrition and dehydration.

Acquaintances say his wife believed chemicals sprayed on area roads had caused her husband’s illness.

‘‘She was quite paranoid about the government, and I don’t know what led to that,’’ Wallace said.

The family refused help from neighbours and their former church, but did routinely receive food from the centre, Wallace said, downplaying reports that the children had been subsisting on lily-pad soup and lake water.

The younger children were kept home from school. With no money for utilities, they did without heat, electricity, telephone and running water.

The situation reached a crisis on Tuesday, when JoAnn McGuckin was offered cash and a trip to the store by deputies. She was subsequently arrested on a warrant charging felony injury of a child - a charge authorities have refused to elaborate on.

In court Wednesday, her long red hair loose about her shoulders, she asked that the court appoint an attorney and was ordered held on $100,000 (£70,000) bail. Prosecutors said she had been spending the family’s meagre financial resources on alcohol.

Sheriff Phil Jarvis accused a television station of spoiling the negotiations between a Catholic priest and a relative of the six children on Wednesday when its news helicopter appeared overhead.

KREM-TV news director Rich Lebenson said on Thursday the station did not know that talks were going on and would review its policies.