Is there even one person that believes that Mr.Yantis had any intention of harming anyone but the bull?
no
Not anymore, at least. Since everyone else has ideas about what might have happened, I'll throw one out.
Young, inexperienced deputy responds to a crash. People are hurt, trapped in cars and there's a giant injured bull on the side of the road. So he tries to shoot the thing, obviously in all the wrong places, and it just won't die. Now his nerves are fried. He's got the wreck to deal with, he just fired his gun for maybe the first time in a real situation, and the bull still isn't dead.
Then the rancher shows up. The rancher immediately flips out on him, shouting about wasted meat and the suffering bull and what a dumb young punk the cop is.
Words are exchanged and now we've got a full fledged pissing contest going on. The cop tells the rancher to get out of the crash scene and wait. Rancher walks away and sends for a rifle.
Deputy looks over a bit later and sees rancher with a rifle. Deputy grabs rancher by he shoulder and the gun accidentally discharges.
Deputy thinks "this crazy old coot is shooting at me!" and shoots him.
Wife and son-in-law rush toward the rancher, who is at the deputy's feet. Deputy thinks they're rushing at him for shooting the rancher and handcuffs them.
From the perspective of the rancher and his family the deputy is a murderer.
The deputy's perspective IN THE MOMENT THE RIFLE WENT OFF was that he was being shot at. The deputy's perspective now is likely that he made a terrible, terrible mistake. _______________________________________
My point being that this could all the the result of one terrible, awful misperception. A lot of mistakes led up to that misperception, no doubt, and likely a few spread around on both sides of the coin.
But not everything in life is the result of malice. Sometimes mistakes are made. That doesn't excuse the tragedy of what happened, but it can help explain how it happened.
My theory as well only figure the rancher may have had a high bac and add a wreck victim walking around freaking out and an entrapped driver wailing like a claxon and you have a situation that got completely FUBAR'd in a flash.
