A day after last week’s fatal shooting of a U.S. Border Patrol agent in northern Vermont, federal authorities issued an alert to firearms dealers seeking information about gun purchases from a person they described as a “person of interest” in the agent’s death.
The alert, obtained by VTDigger, identified that person of interest as Michelle Jacqueline Zajko.
Zajko has not previously been publicly identified by federal authorities as potentially connected to the fatal shooting of border patrol agent David C. Maland on Interstate 91 in Coventry on the afternoon of Jan. 20.
A day after the shooting, the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives sent an alert to federally licensed firearms dealers reading, “ATF is asking for your assistance in identifying any firearms purchases made by Michelle Jacqueline Zajko, a person of interest in the shooting of a Customs and Border Protection Officer on Jan. 20, 2025.”
The alert asked firearms dealers to check their records and contact ATF if they had “any information about transfers or attempted transfers” of firearms to Michelle Jacqueline Zajko.
ATF officials in Vermont did not return phone messages seeking comment Tuesday.
The federal alert further complicates an already tangled case, one in which authorities and media reports have drawn links between several acts of violence in multiple states.
Ties to the Northeast Kingdom
Teresa Youngblut, 21, of Washington state, who federal authorities said was driving the 2015 Toyota Prius pulled over by border patrol on Interstate 91 in Coventry on Jan. 20, faces federal weapons charges for allegedly opening fire on Maland during the traffic stop.
Felix Bauckholt, a German national who was a passenger in the Prius, also allegedly drew a weapon during the traffic stop, according to federal authorities, but he was fatally shot before he could fire his weapon.
Youngblut has not been directly charged with killing Maland.
Youngblut and Bauckholt had been under surveillance by federal authorities for about a week prior to the shooting, according to court documents in Youngblut’s case. The pair had been spotted in northern Vermont wearing tactical gear, including while walking in downtown Newport, the filings stated.
Youngblut, who was also shot and wounded in the shootout, is set to appear Thursday in federal court in Burlington for a detention hearing to determine whether she will remain in custody while the case against her remains pending. She first appeared in court on Monday.
The ATF’s alert now identifies a new alleged associate of the pair: Michelle Zajko, a name that is also listed on public records as the owner of a small plot of land in the Northeast Kingdom town of Derby, which is adjacent to Coventry.
According to Derby town records, a Michelle Zajko bought a half-acre piece of property on Bates Hill Road in Derby in 2021 for $10,000. The land is undeveloped, according to town records. Zajko owes $974 in delinquent property taxes on that land, according to Derby tax records from tax years 2022 through 2024.
Voter rolls from last fall in the town of Coventry also list a Michelle Zajko at a separate address. Coventry town officials could not be reached by phone Tuesday.
Zajko could not be reached for comment Tuesday afternoon.
Violence in multiple states
In a court document filed ahead of Youngblut’s Monday hearing, Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew Lasher wrote that the person who purchased the firearms possessed by Youngblut and Bauckholt at the time of Maland’s shooting was also a “person of interest” in a double-homicide investigation in Delaware County, Pennsylvania.
Lasher’s filing does not name that person, nor does it identify the victims of that homicide or when it took place.
In January 2023, however, a couple, 72-year-old Richard Zajko and 69-year-old Rita Zajko, were found dead inside their Chester Heights home. Their deaths were ruled homicides, CBS News reported at the time. Chester Heights is a community in Delaware County, Pennsylvania.
According to a public records database, a Michelle Zajko was registered to vote in 2016 at 18 Highland Drive in Media, Pennsylvania. That appears to be the address of the home where Richard and Rita Zajko were found dead, according to local news reports.
Derby property records list a Pennsylvania phone number for Michelle Zajko.
Legal notices published in Pennsylvania indicate that a Michelle Zajko is associated with the estates of Richard and Rita Zajko.
Lasher’s court filing also states that both Youngblut and the gun purchaser “are acquainted with and have been in frequent contact with an individual who was detained by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania during that homicide investigation; that individual is also a person of interest in a homicide investigation in Vallejo, California.”
The court records did not identify that person either.
According to the nonprofit California news organization Open Vallejo, Youngblut had applied for a marriage license in Washington state in November 2024 to wed a 22-year-old named Maximilian Snyder. Snyder was arrested last week in connection with the Jan. 17 stabbing death of Curtis Lind, a Vallejo landlord.
Open Vallejo reported that Lind had been blinded in one eye during an altercation with tenants in 2022. A search of the property at the time found used surgical equipment and expensive electronics in box trucks in which they lived, according to the news outlet. Those trucks were registered in Vermont.
Lind was set to testify against the tenants in a criminal trial in April, Open Vallejo reported.
North Carolina to Vermont
In Monday’s court filing, Lasher wrote that the serial number of the firearms possessed by Youngblut and Bauckholt at the time of the border patrol officer’s fatal shooting showed that both firearms had been purchased by a person “purporting to be a resident of Orleans, Vermont.”
The property records portal for the town of Derby lists an Orleans address for Zajko. That address appears to be identical to the one listed in Coventry voter rolls.
The guns, the prosecutor wrote, had been purchased from a federally licensed firearms dealer in Mount Tabor in February 2024.
Carey Halkiotis of Safari Supply, a firearms dealer in Mount Tabor, said Tuesday that he had been asked by authorities not to talk about the matter when asked if his shop sold the firearms allegedly possessed by Youngblut and Bauckholt on the day of Maland’s shooting.
Two other federally licensed firearms dealers in the small Rutland County town said that they did not sell the firearms.
Some new details also emerged Tuesday about Bauckholt, who court filings showed owned the Toyota Prius that was involved in the traffic stop in Vermont.
According to court filings, Bauckholt had registered the vehicle in North Carolina. The Associated Press reported Tuesday that Bauckholt and Youngblut had been renting units in separate duplexes in the same area of Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Box trucks were parked outside both units, according to the Associated Press, “and Bauckholt was running an electrical cord to one of them.”
The owner of the duplexes, who was not named in the article, said that another man appeared to be living with Bauckholt in his unit, according to the Associated Press.
“They were always wearing black and in the back of my mind, this entire time, I’m just thinking, ‘What is going on with these people?’” he told the Associated Press.
Read the story on VTDigger here: Federal officials link third “person of interest” to Vermont border patrol agent’s shooting.