Meanwhile, the FBI supplied the GOON squads with weaponry and intelligence information on AIM, and looked away as they committed crimes. As the situation worsened, the traditionalists asked AIM to return to the reservation to offer protection. Leonard Peltier was among those who responded. He and a group of a dozen others set up camp on the Jumping Bull ranch, the home of a number of traditional families. They were ostensibly looking for Jimmy Eagle, who had gotten into a fistfight and stolen a pair of cowboy boots.
Shots rang out, and the residents became alarmed.
Law enforcement immediately began mobilizing. Sightings of the red pickup truck leaving the scene were transmitted by radio, but the truck was never apprehended. Within a couple hours, over 150 FBI swat team members, BIA police, and GOONs had surrounded the ranch. Peltier helped lead a small group of teenagers out of the area, barely escaping through the hail of bullets. When the shoot-out ended, AIM member Joseph Killsright Stuntz laid dead, shot in the head by a sniper.