A man suspected in a shooting at a Montana bar that left four people dead was captured Friday just a few miles from where the shooting happened after hundreds of law enforcement officers spent the past week scouring nearby mountainsides, 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 100 miles (190 km) from Missoula.
Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen said during a news conference that about 130 law enforcement officers made a hard push Thursday after getting tips that helped verify they were looking in the right area.
“We think that was directly correlated to flushing him out,” Knudsen said of the number of officers that had swarmed the area. “We were able to move really quickly and get our suspect apprehended.”
Gov. Greg Gianforte first confirmed Brown’s capture on social media Friday afternoon, saying it was an incredible response from law enforcement officers across the state.
“They followed up on every tip. They spent hours climbing over these mountains, looking for this criminal,” the governor said later during the news conference. “They used every resource available to them to search for him.”
The community finally would be able to sleep tonight, Anaconda-Deer Valley County Attorney Morgan Smith said, adding that the case is just the beginning for prosecutors who will be seeking to charge Brown with the killings.
It was not immediately clear if Brown had legal representation. Email and phone messages were left Friday with the Montana public defender’s office.
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 prompted the closure of a 22-square-mile (57-square-kilometer) stretch of forest as authorities searched for Brown. Earlier in the week, Knudsen had said it didn’t appear that Brown had broken into any cabins or homes in the area for food or additional supplies.
Eric Hempstead, who owns The Ranch Bar, about 5 miles (8 kilometers) west of The Owl Bar, described an intense law enforcement presence in the densely wooded area over the last couple days that involved search dogs.
“The guy was never going to make it out in the open,” he said, noting that he and his neighbors were armed and ready to protect themselves.
Brown, who lived next door to The Owl Bar in Anaconda, 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 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.
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Associated Press writer Thomas Peipert in Denver contributed to this report.
