Authorities say a March 14 argument at a home on Westergard Road ended with a man wounded and a woman jailed.
CHALLIS, Idaho — A shooting case that began with a late-night domestic violence call has become one of the most closely watched criminal matters in this small central Idaho town, where investigators say an argument inside a house ended with a man shot in the leg and a woman arrested upstairs.
The accused woman, Diane Wetherbee, 65, now faces a felony aggravated battery charge after deputies said she used a .380 pistol during the March 14 confrontation. The case has drawn notice well beyond Custer County because of the stark account police say they received from the wounded man: that he handed Wetherbee the gun and told her to shoot him. Public reporting reviewed Tuesday did not show whether a preliminary hearing scheduled for March 30 led to any later court action, leaving the community with an arrest narrative that is vivid but still incomplete.
Challis is the sort of place where a single sheriff’s response can become the main local topic by the next morning. The known facts all sit within a compact map of the town: a home on the 500 block of Westergard Road, a back porch where the wounded man was found, an upstairs bedroom where deputies said Wetherbee was sleeping, and the county jail where officers said she later admitted shooting the man. Deputies were called at 11:23 p.m., according to court documents cited in local reporting. By the time they arrived, the man was outside and headed to an ambulance. Sheriff Levi Maydole was told there that Wetherbee and the man had been drinking and arguing before he handed her the pistol. Investigators said she shot him, then went to bed.
That account gave the case its headline, but the details of the house itself gave it texture. Deputies said the pistol was on the bedroom floor near multiple puddles of blood. More blood was reportedly found on carpet outside the room, and bloody boots were found near the back door. Another man in the house told officers he had not seen the shooting but heard a single gunshot. In a larger city, those details might blend into a daily crime log. In a town like Challis, they tend to stand out because they describe a whole event in a handful of places residents can picture. Even so, major parts of the story remain unknown. Authorities have not publicly detailed the victim’s condition after treatment, explained the relationship between the people in the home, or said whether anyone had called for help before the shot was fired.
The public reaction in cases like this often turns first to the strangest detail, and here that was the allegation that Wetherbee went upstairs and slept after the shooting. But in legal terms, the quieter facts may matter more: the victim’s statement, the witness who heard one shot, the reported confession on the ride to jail, and the physical evidence collected inside the house. One report said Wetherbee confessed to shooting the man multiple times, a line that appears to sit awkwardly beside the witness account of one shot and the public description of a wound to the leg. Until fuller court records emerge, that tension remains part of the uncertainty around the case rather than a resolved contradiction.
For the county court system, the next steps are familiar even if the facts are not. Wetherbee was booked on a $25,000 bond. A judge issued a no-contact order requiring her to stay away from the alleged victim. If she is convicted of aggravated battery with the use of a deadly weapon, public reports say she could face up to 15 years in prison. A preliminary hearing had been scheduled for March 30, though no public report reviewed Tuesday described what happened after that date. That leaves the case suspended, at least publicly, between the first dramatic police account and whatever more formal evidence prosecutors may later present.
For now, Challis is left with a story that feels at once intimate and unresolved: a house, an argument, a gun handed across a room, a shot, and then a silence long enough for deputies to find one person bleeding and another asleep. The next milestone is not another vivid detail from that night, but a court update showing how the state intends to carry the case forward.
Author note: Last updated April 14, 2026.