Death at the Missoula County Jail Results in Coroner’s Inquest

Missoula, MT (KGVO-AM News) - The Missoula County Attorney’s Office filed 19 new felony complaints this week, which is four more than last week and slightly higher than the weekly average. According to County Attorney Matt Jennings, there were six violent crimes. 

“There were five endangerment crimes and almost all involved driving behavior, one of which included a person trying to run another individual over with a car,” Jennings said. “We had one property crime, five drug crimes, and two administrative crimes. Usually, those are fugitive from justice cases.” 

Jennings wanted to highlight the drug crimes this week.  

“When we tackle drug issues in our community, we really try and dedicate resources to people that are committing other crimes or engaging in other unsafe behavior because of their drug use,” Jennings said. “Personally, I don't necessarily care what people do to their own bodies if they aren't hurting somebody else. But what we really try and look at is whether the drug use is exposing children to drugs or whether other crimes are being committed because of the drug use or whether this person has now been arrested for multiple things over the last six months and we see that they're spiraling and escalating their behavior.” 

Jennings said they are really trying to focus on rehabilitative aspects of criminal justice when people are using drugs.  

“Sometimes we need to give them a little bit of a nudge and we can do that in the criminal justice system by having a little bit of a stick and a carrot to encourage them to get their own treatment,” Jennings said. “If they can't do it on their own, there are some great Department of Corrections programs that have proven records of success of helping people tackle their addiction.” 

READ MORE: Missoula News - Crime Reports

In addition, Jennings said there were two coroner’s inquests today. 

“The inquest involves an individual that is believed to have committed suicide while in the Missoula County Jail and another individual that committed suicide by firearm upon a response from law enforcement where he was likely to be detained to at least investigate what was going on in the situation,” Jennings said. “They're always really tragic. They're tough for us to get through and for jurors and family members to learn some of those circumstances but it's a really important job. We have to make sure that government is transparent, that people know what's going on when a person does die in those circumstances, and that nobody's hiding anything or trying to cover something up.” 

The Missoula County Attorney’s Office provides a weekly crime report every Friday morning at 9:00 on Talk Back. You can listen to Jennings’s full report below: