Kenyon Youngstrom
From Palo Alto Daily News
CORDELIA — Kaycee phoned her father, petrified as she heard a stranger walking through the house.
As the then-high school sophomore cowered in her room with a friend, her father John Caughman — miles away from the house — did what every Aspen Court resident in need of help did. He called Ken.
Neighbor Kenyon Youngstrom, a California Highway Patrol officer, told Caughman to have his daughter stay put, got his flashlight and searched the entire house. “Tell your daughter it’s all clear,” Youngstrom told his worried friend.
It turned out the “intruder” was Caughman’s black Labrador retriever, who went into the house through a backyard screen and loudly tramped on the home’s wood laminate floors, terrifying Kaycee.
The 2009 incident became a running joke between the two families. But on Thursday, Caughman retold the story with a heavy heart, less than 24 hours after his friend and trusted neighbor succumbed to a bullet wound to the head after a traffic stop Tuesday morning on a freeway shoulder in Alamo.
The suspect in the shooting, Christopher Lacy — a 36-year-old software engineer from Rancho Tehama, near Corning — was shot to death moments later by a second CHP officer. That officer has been placed on paid administrative leave per standard procedure.
Investigators offered no new details Thursday about a possible motive, other than to say that Youngstrom was shot just a few seconds after first speaking
with Lacy. But in ….MORE