Violence Dominated Missoula Crime This Week, Including One Homicide Case

The Missoula County Attorney’s Office charged 16 new criminal complaints this week. County Attorney Kirsten Pabst says seven of those were violent crimes and five of those were violent crimes involving family members.

“One of those was an aggravated assault, partner family member assault, unlawful restraint, and criminal destruction of a communication device,” Pabst said. “Another case involved obstructing a peace officer and an assault on a peace officer. The defendant allegedly headbutted the police officer that was trying to break up the disturbance. Another partner or family member assault case involved two brothers.”

According to Pabst, they also charged one deliberate homicide case. In that case, the evidence shows that the defendant went inside the victim’s apartment while he was sleeping and stabbed him in the chest, causing him to bleed out inside of his body cavity.

“Moving on to the endangerment category, we charged two criminal endangerment cases,” Pabst said. “One was a DUI. The defendant was driving the wrong way down the highway and almost crashed into two other vehicles. In the other case, the defendant was charged with criminal endangerment, eluding, reckless driving and a whole host of other crimes.”

Pabst says they charged one felony DUI. In that case, the defendant nearly hit a woman while speeding over the Orange Street bridge before crashing into two parked cars. When officers arrested him, they found pipes, a butane torch, a fix kit and meth in his vehicle.

“Moving on to the property crimes category, there was one theft case and an arson case where the defendant was charged with blowing up an ATM, and allegedly possessing a destructive device,” Pabst said. “In this case, that device was a pipe bomb.”

Finally, Pabst says they also filed three meth cases.