A shooting at a Montana bar Friday left four people dead, and law enforcement officers were searching for a suspect described by his niece as a former U.S. soldier who struggled to get help for mental health problems.
Officers searched a mountainous area west of the small town of Anaconda for the 45-year-old suspect, Michael Paul Brown. He lived next door to the site of the 10:30 a.m. shooting at the Owl Bar, according to public records and bar owner David Gwerder.
The bartender and three patrons were killed, said Gwerder, who was not there at the time. He believed the four victims were the only ones present during the shooting, and was not aware of any prior conflicts between them and Brown.
“He knew everybody that was in that bar. I guarantee you that,” Gwerder said. “He didn’t have any running dispute with any of them. I just think he snapped.”
Brown’s home was cleared by a SWAT team and he was last seen in the Stump Town area, just west of Anaconda, authorities said.
More than a dozen officers from local and state police converged on that area, locking it down so no one was allowed in or out. A helicopter also hovered over a nearby mountainside as officers moved among the trees, said Randy Clark, a retired police officer who lives there.
Brown was believed to be armed, the Montana Highway Patrol said in a statement.
Brown served in the U.S. Army as an armor crewman from 2001 to 2005 and deployed to Iraq from early 2004 until March 2005, according to Lt. Col. Ruth Castro, an Army spokesperson. Brown was in the Montana National Guard from 2006 to March 2009, Castro said. He left military service in the rank of sergeant.
His niece, Clare Boyle, told the AP on Friday that her uncle has been mentally sick for years and that she and other family members have tried repeatedly to seek help.
“This isn’t just a drunk/high man going wild,” she wrote in a Facebook message. “It’s a sick man who doesn’t know who he is sometimes and frequently doesn’t know where or when he is either.”
As reports of the shooting spread through town, business owners locked their doors and sheltered inside with customers.
Anaconda is about 75 miles (120 kilometers) southeast of Missoula in a valley hemmed in by mountains. A town of about 9,000 people, it was founded by copper barons who profited off nearby mines in the late 1800s. A smelter stack that’s no longer operational looms over the valley. The Montana Division of Criminal Investigation is leading the investigation into the shooting.
The owner of the Firefly Café in Anaconda said she locked up her business at about 11 a.m. Friday after getting alerted to the shooting by a friend.
“We are Montana, so guns are not new to us,” café owner Barbie Nelson said. “For our town to be locked down, everybody’s pretty rattled.”