Court filings, videos shed more light on alleged river stabbing in Boise County
Court filings and videos submitted as part of a civil court case accusing an Idaho elected official of threatening an Ada County woman and stabbing a minor shed more light on the altercation, which each party claims was instigated by the other.
The pleadings and videos were filed in the case by Terri Pickens, attorney for plaintiffs Abby and Treyson Beard and a minor identified only as T.B. The Beards filed a civil lawsuit March 26 against Boise County Commissioner Darrell “Lindy” Lindstrom and two co-defendants.
The Beards’ lawsuit claimed Lindstrom and the other men “touched, pushed, hit and beat” the family during a fight on the Payette River near Horseshoe Bend in August 2025. The confrontation allegedly started after T.B. “flipped off” Lindstrom’s group, who were riding close to the Beards’ rafts on jet skis at high speeds, the lawsuit said.
The Beard family claims the men escalated the situation to physical violence, at which time Abby Beard took out a river safety knife in self-defense that Lindstrom then allegedly used to threaten her and stab T.B.. In a counterclaim, Lindstrom denied threatening or stabbing the Beard family and said he was trying to disarm Abby Beard after her group instigated the physical violence.
Videos from the scene corroborate several details in the lawsuit. They show men fistfighting in the water, Abby Beard holding a knife and one man with blood running down his face.
In a transcript of an interview with a Boise County Sheriff’s deputy that was filed as part of the case, Treyson Beard told officials one of the men smacked his phone down as he was recording — which can also be seen in one of the videos. Treyson and Abby Beard also told the deputy Lindstrom grabbed Abby “from the back” around the same time.
Video briefly shows Lindstrom and Abby Beard in an apparent physical confrontation.
Footage taken from a body camera worn by one of the Boise County Sheriff’s deputies that responded to the scene shows two deputies interviewing Lindstrom near the river shortly before 8 p.m. the day of the incident.
In the interview, Lindstrom told the deputies he was trying to take the knife from Abby Beard “to make sure nobody got hurt.” He also said he didn’t think T.B. ever got stabbed.
“I think she fell on a rock or something,” he told deputies.
In an interview with a deputy on Sept. 5, 2025, Abby Beard said her daughter had a large slash mark to the outside of her left leg that “was down to the muscle, almost to the bone.” T.B. was transported to Saint Alphonsus Regional Medical Center in Boise via ambulance. Photos submitted as evidence show the wound was closed with stitches.
Lindstrom called the scene “a free-for-all” in his interview near the river.
“This county’s getting taken over,” Lindstrom told the deputies. “You can’t just come to our county and start whacking the s--- out of people.”
The videos were first reported by KTVB.
No criminal charges have been filed in the investigation, which Pickens said previously left her clients “no choice but to initiate a civil action for recovery of damages.”
Boise County Prosecutor Alex Sosa previously told the Idaho Statesman the sheriff’s office “has not completed the investigation due to heavy caseloads.” Sosa last month asked for a special prosecutor to be appointed to handle the case and wrote to Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador to request an Attorney General’s Office investigation into allegations of Boise County commissioners concealing or coercing a law enforcement investigation, open meeting law violations at commission meetings, electioneering from Boise County staff and misuse of public funds.
Sosa said the request for the investigation came at the request of the Boise County Commission “to avoid the slightest appearance of impropriety.”
