A man suspected in a shooting at a Montana bar that left four people dead and prompted a neighborhood lockdown was captured Friday after a weeklong search, authorities said.
Michael Paul Brown, 45, was taken into custody around 2 p.m. near the area where authorities had focused their search in the days following the Aug. 1 shooting at The Owl Bar in Anaconda, about a hundred miles (190 km) from Missoula. Authorities said only that Brown had been placed under arrest, without providing more details about where he was found.
Gov. Greg Gianforte confirmed Brown’s capture on social media Friday afternoon, saying it was an incredible response from law enforcement officers across the state.
“May God continue to be with the families of the four victims still grieving their loss,” he said.
Montana authorities have not said what sparked last week’s shooting, which killed a female bartender and three male patrons. They were identified as Nancy Lauretta Kelley, 64; Daniel Edwin Baillie, 59; David Allen Leach, 70; and Tony Wayne Palm, 74.
Brown’s niece, Clare Boyle, said Kelley worked as an oncology nurse before becoming a bartender to fill free time in her retirement and that she was a close family friend who helped Brown’s mother when she was sick.
The shooting rattled the tight-knit town of about 9,000 people, and many residents were on high alert as authorities searched wooded hillsides from the ground and air. About 22 square miles (57 square kilometers) of forest southwest of Anaconda had been closed to the public by forest managers as a precaution.
Earlier in the week, Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen had said it didn’t appear that Brown had broken into any cabins or homes in the area to get food or additional supplies.
Brown, who lived next door to The Owl Bar, served in the Army as an armor crewman from 2001 to 2005 and deployed to Iraq from early 2004 until March 2005. He also was in the Montana National Guard from 2006 to 2009.
Boyle told The Associated Press that her uncle has struggled with mental illness for years and she and other family members repeatedly sought help.
Before Brown’s father died in 2015, Boyle said Brown was “a good, loving uncle” and worked odd jobs such as painting and roofing. Then, she and other family members noticed a slip in his mental state. Brown began experiencing delusions and often did not know who, when or where he was.
Family members had requested welfare checkups when they believed he was becoming a danger to himself. He was an avid hunter and kept guns at his home. Boyle said Brown would tell authorities he was fine.
The Anaconda-Deer Lodge County Law Enforcement Department did not respond this week to several email and phone messages requesting records of the welfare checks Boyle said they helped conduct on Brown in the years leading up to the shooting.
Montana is not among the states that have so called red flag laws allowing families to formally petition for guns to be removed from the homes of people who are deemed a danger to themselves or others. The state Legislature passed a bill this year banning local governments from enacting their own red flag gun laws. The governor signed it into law in May.
___
Schoenbaum reported from Salt Lake City, Utah.