Aaron Kreifels discovered the comatose Shepard after falling off his bicycle; his early remark to reporters echoed around the world, that when he first saw the figure on the fence he thought it was a scarecrow. Kreifels testified that, "[Shepard] sounded to me like his lungs were full of blood. He was breathing hard."
Kreifels ran to the nearest house, that of University of Wyoming professor Charles Dolan. Dolan testified, "I made the call [to 911]." Both men went to Shepard to wait for the answer to that call. The first to respond to the dispatcher's message that "A subject was tied and beaten," was Sheriff Deputy Reggie Fluty. She testified that, "He was bloody. There was a large pool of blood in his right ear." There was so much blood on his face that, "The only white skin I saw was where he had been crying." She described their efforts to free Shepard from the fence, and how at one point he stopped breathing when they changed his position. Fluty recalled waiting for the ambulance and telling Shepard, "Baby boy, I'm so sorry this happened to you."