Missoulian week in review: Local news recap for May 11-17 (2024)

Here are some of the headlines from this past week in the Missoulian. To read the full stories, click the link on each headline:

With about 150 workers set to lose their jobs at the Roseburg Forest Products factory in Missoula this month, officials with the Montana Department of Labor and Industry paid a visit this week to try to help them land on their feet.

Roseburg has operated a particleboard plant in the Northside neighborhood for decades, but thecompany announcedthe Missoula facility will be shut down permanently on May 22. All workers will be laid off.

To help ease the pain of the mass layoff event, state officials held a "Rapid Response" event over the course of two days at the plant on Wednesday and Thursday.

"Workers generally trickle in and out as they have a moment to step away from their workstations," explained Sam Loveridge, a public information officer for the Department of Labor and Industry. "We typically have Unemployment Insurance give their presentation first and then Job Service Programs staff presents the training assistance options."

A cyclist was rescued Thursday evening after taking a hard, high-speed crash on a popular gravel trail north of Mount Jumbo, roughly between the upper Rattlesnake neighborhood and Marshall Mountain.

According to Jon Muir, a paramedic with Missoula Rural Fire Department, personnel were dispatched at 7:06 p.m. to a medical call initially thought to be at the intersection of Marshall Canyon Road and the Marshall Grade, a gravel road closed to vehicles but popular with cyclists. But, he said, GPS coordinates provided by the reporting party showed the crashed rider's exact location: the upper reaches of Marshall Grade, approximately near the top of Woods Gulch and the bottom of the Sheep Mountain Trail. The trail is not associated with Marshall Mountain Park.

The location, he said, prompted a full backcountry rescue response with a small wildland fire engine suited for the narrow Marshall Grade, a UTV with a backboard and other medical and rescue equipment, an additional engine, a battalion chief and an ambulance from Missoula Emergency Services waiting on Marshall Canyon Road.

Missoula County's Office of Emergency Management and a national app have teamed up to launch a new program meant to connect CPR-trained residents with people experiencing sudden cardiac emergencies.

The app, calledPulsePoint, connects citizen responders to public emergencies to help increase survival rates of cardiac episodes like heart attacks. The county hopes to train 20,000 residents in CPR in the next two years, who would ideally then sign up to be a part of the app.

"We have been looking at how we can get more of the public involved in CPR, because the data is very clear that the faster someone intervenes, the better outcome people see," said Adriane Beck, Office of Emergency Management director.The county received a $60,000 federal grant in October for CPR training and implementation, which helped pay for the PulsePoint partnership.

Heart disease was the top cause of death in Missoula County from 2017 to 2021, according to the county's most recent Community Health Assessment released in January.

Beck said several local government agencies have been talking about ways to get faster response times to CPR emergencies.

Starting Monday, Lake County officials say they will no longer accept Flathead Reservation tribal members in their jail.

The county will not pay costs to house tribal juvenile defenders. And it will stop performing autopsies on tribal members, among other things.

The change is the latest consequence of a years-long conflict between Lake County and the state of Montana regarding a nearly 60-year-old law enforcement agreement.

On Monday, the state will likely assume felony criminal jurisdiction over tribal members on the Flathead Reservation. Gov. Greg Gianforte has disputed this, citing a technicality. He's also said he intends to pull the state out of the agreement, which would kick jurisdictional authority to the federal government.

UCLA law professor Carole Goldberg likened the situation in Montana to a “hot potato.”

“Who’s going to get caught with it?” she asked. “Is it the tribes, the feds, the county or the state?”

Pretrial services in Missoula County are moving in-house after its current vendor and the county failed to reach a new contract.

After 30 yearsof beingrun by Missoula Correctional Services (MCS), Missoula’s pretrial program is moving under the umbrella of the county’s Community Justice Department. Pretrial is a way for the criminal justice system to monitor people accused of crimes before they’re either convicted or acquitted of charges.

“Missoula County and MCS jointly decided not to renew the current pretrial contract due to the county’s increased administrative and reporting requirements without increased funding to support these changes,” Shantelle Gaynor, director of the Missoula County Community Justice Department, said in an email.

"The County is grateful for MCS and the excellent work they have done in our community over the last few decades," she added.

The Missoulianpreviously reportedcontract negotiations were stalled, and MCS’s Executive Director Sue Wilkins said there were operational requirements the county was asking for that weren’t workable for MCS, which ran pretrial services in Missoula since 1998 up until this year’s switch.

One of the oldest and most iconic buildings in Missoula is also home to perhaps the most interesting business in town. And it has a new local owner who's set on preserving all that history and commerce.

The Montana Hotel Building at 331 West Railroad Street at the north end of downtown Missoula was built in the late 1880s and was possibly completed even before Montana became a state in November of 1889.

The three-story, 15,000-square-foot building was located near what once was the passenger train depot at the north end of Higgins Avenue. New arrivals to town would only need to walk across the street with their luggage to check in. During the Prohibition era, a secret stairway accessed by a hidden door in a closet led down to a speakeasy in the basem*nt.

Since 1991, the building has been home to the Montana Antique Mall. There are 49 different dealers who rent stalls in the building to sell antiques, vintage items, retro clothes, oddities and artwork. You can find everything from a cast iron Dutch oven to vintage snowshoes to old liquor bottles in the shop, which has well over a million items for sale.

And the building was recently purchased by Nick Caras, a local entrepreneur who also has bought and rehabbed other historic buildings in town.

The text of the Constitution might not seem like obvious material for a mostly one-person drama, but when filtered through one female playwright’s personal details, it can be both memoir, history lesson and fodder for humor.

Playwright Heidi Schreck’s show, which won awards for her 2019 Broadway performances, takes a personal lens on how the document was written, who it was written by, and who it protects through a very specific framework: looking back at her own years as a teenager competing in speech and debate.

The Montana Repertory Theatre is staging the play for a short two-day run Thursday and Friday in the historic Elks Club Ballroom, which functions as a ready-made set.

The demanding lead is taken on by Kelly Quinnett, who had roles in the Rep’s productions of “Go. Please. Go.,” a tricky personal drama, and “Re-entry,” a script based on contemporary U.S. troops’ recollections of deployment.

A recent hire at the University of Montana’s College of Education wants to tackle the state’s teacher shortage, bringing with him decades of experience in local schools.

Mike Perry, who’s leaving his post as the superintendent of the Arlee School District, says he hopes he can leverage his new role as associate dean to show people the impact of public education in local communities. He’ll officially join the College of Education in mid-July.

“Teacher shortage, administrator and counselor shortages, you name it, public schools are hurting so bad for employees,” he said in an interview with the Missoulian.

Perry, who holds a master’s and doctorate in education from UM, said he hopes to leverage the connections he’s made in Montana’s education sphere to bolster the appeal of teaching and administration positions through UM’s education college.

“I thought this was my chance to jump in and promote teaching and administration,” he said.

The associate dean position leads UM’s College of Education alongside Dean Dan Lee.

The University of Montana alum and Oscar winner plays a deranged professor hunting a young woman in the woods.

—Charlotte Macorn, for the Missoulian

Derick Wycherly, a printmaker who grew up in Montana, said it feels full circle to be back in his hometown with a job that calls for the unusual skills he’s learned and have them “tested hard," he said.

This month, he was named associate curator for the Montana Museum of Art and Culture. He returned last year to be its collections manager, a role he'll still hold, helping guide the mammoth project of moving the 11,000-piece collection from various places around campus into its new 17,000-square-foot, custom-built museum that opened last fall.

Wycherly spent nine years in New York working at a top printmaking workshop.

“I learned so much — especially about running a small business and dealing with really good artists and seeing how they work and what makes them successful,” he said.

He was born in Missoula and grew up mostly in Pablo and Ronan plus other towns around the state, spent time in Rocky Boy’s Reservation, where he's an enrolled member of the Chippewa Cree Tribe, and then finished out his high school years in Missoula.

Missoula Symphony play's tribute to Broadway, Sussex School Shadowcat Theatre revisits Little Red Riding Hood, and much more is on tap this week in the Garden City.

A prominent Idaho physician and accomplished mountaineer died in an avalanche while backcountry skiing in the state's Lost River Range on Friday.

Terry O'Connor, 48, of Ketchum, was an ER doctor at St. Luke's Wood River Medical Center in Ketchum and the former longtime director of the Blaine County Ambulance District. He was widely recognized for his leadership when Blaine County's Wood River Valley became the early U.S. hotspot for COVID infections in March and April 2020. He later spearheaded studies of the coronavirus' prevalence among county residents to better understand how the virus spread and mutated.

He was also an accomplished backcountry skier and mountaineer who traveled thrice to Mount Everest — once working in base camp, once serving as expedition doctor and once summiting the world's highest peak. He was well-known in the Wood River Valley skiing community as a talented and driven backcountry skier who frequently partnered up with professional guides and avalanche forecasters.

He climbed, skied and ran up, over and down mountain ranges around the globe. St. Luke's hospital system reported in a 2021 blog on O'Connor that he previously worked as "a bike tour guide, a ski patroller (and) a National Park Service climbing ranger."

He also traveled around the world to provide health care services in places with less developed medical systems.

The city of Missoula split its attorney's office into two positions— one to cover criminal cases and the other to cover civil cases— to address the increasing demand for legal services across Missoula.

Missoula Mayor Andrea Davis confirmed Keithi Worthington to oversee criminal cases and Ryan Sudbury to cover civil caseson Wednesday.

Both lawyers are already employees of the city andhave been working under the split structure since former City Attorney Jim Nugent retired in June 2023.

Nugent worked at the city for more than 45 years overseeing both criminal and civil matters, and led the municipality on several critical legal cases, including acquiring the city's water system in 2018.

Davis said population growth in Missoula has increased demand in both criminal and civil cases coming to the City Attorney's Office.

Most mountain bike skills workshops are centered around how to better ride trails. MTB Missoula's workshop this Saturday will be different: It's a six-hour clinic on how to build and maintain the trails enjoyed not just by mountain bikers, but also hikers and runners.

The nonprofit's first Trail Skills Workshop will be held 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday, meeting at the main Rattlesnake Trailhead parking lot in the Rattlesnake National Recreation Area north of Missoula. The workshop is free but space is limited, so participants are required to register in advance online atmtbmissoula.org/events. Grist Milling and Bakery is donating scones for the event while Black Coffee will handle caffeination duties. If demand is strong enough, MTB Missoula may offer another workshop in the fall.

The workshop will focus on trail building and maintenance techniques including grade reversals, what makes a good drain and how to construct one, and how to properly align a trail. Participants will test their skills by improving the Colorado Gulch trail that runs between Sawmill Gulch and Fenceline trails.

When the 2024 Pulitzer Prizes — the top awards in American journalism—were announced last week they had special impact thousands of miles away at the University of Montana School of Journalism.

That’s because when the Washington Post’s thorough and unflinching reporting on the AR-15 won the prize for national reporting, the team included the newest member of UM’s journalism school faculty.

Lisa Krantz, a longtime photographer at the San Antonio Express-News and Ph.D. candidate at the University of Missouri, was part of the award-winning group. Krantz photographed “A Tragedy Without End” about the survivors of the November 2017 First Baptist Church massacre in Sutherland Springs, Texas, which left 26 people dead and 22 others wounded.

Krantz, who is quick to point out she prefers being behind the camera, stressed how important it was to tell the story of the community she first covered some seven years ago.

“It is extremely humbling to be included with such an incredible team of journalists and contribute to the series that brings comprehensive and groundbreaking understanding of the devastation caused by gun violence and mass shootings to the public,” she said. “It is even more of an honor to be trusted and embraced by the survivors and congregation at First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs and allowed in their lives at their most vulnerable in 2017, and again for this story.”

—UM News Service

Cody Marble's rape conviction was overturned roughly seven years ago, but the trial to officially establish his innocence began this week.

Marble, 39, is the plaintiff in a civil case against Missoula County, where he was charged, prosecuted and convicted by a jury of raping another boy in the juvenile detention center when he was 17. The2017 dismissalof that conviction is one of the highest-profile cases won by the Montana Innocence Project, in part because Marble has remained activein the advocacy work to secure compensation for the wrongfully convicted.

Rather than a typical lawsuit that follows overturned convictions in which someone seeks damages against the government for the flawed proceedings that imprisoned them, Marble is attempting to secure a compensation package approved by the 2021 Legislature for those who have been wrongfully convicted. The state is also a defendant in the case.

The 12-person jury selected Monday won't determine the dollar figure Marble is owed. In the civil case that's arranged like a reverse criminal case, Marble's attorneys are now seeking a jury's affirming verdict that he is innocent of the crime, with the government on defense.

Former county attorneys Kirsten Pabst and Fred Van Valkenburg are both listed as witnesses expected to testify. University of Montana Chief of Police Brad Giffin, in 2002 a detective with the sheriff's office, was one of Tuesday's first witnesses to describe the initial investigation into Marble.

Violent crime slightly decreased in Missoula for 2023, but property crime rose nearly 6%, according to a report from the Missoula Police Department.

The department’s annual report came out last week and offers a comprehensive review of Missoula crime trends and other projects and programs MPD is working on. Though calls for service were up overall in 2023 (MPD responded to 56,234 calls), reported violent crimes within city limits fell.

“Although the total incidents have increased, a positive trend from these numbers is the decline in reported and validated violent crimes,” Missoula Police Chief Mike Colyer wrote in the report.

Violent crime is defined by the Montana Board of Crime Control as sexual intercourse without consent, robbery, aggravated assault and homicide (all felonies).

Local officials on Wednesday identified the victim of a deadly two-vehicle crash involving a Missoula County Sheriff’s Office deputy.

Gaylord Angst, 81, of Florence was killed in a crash on Tuesday morning near Lolo, a news release from the Lake County Sheriff’s Office stated. The Lake County Sheriff’s Office acted as the coroner for the incident.

The wreck happened near mile post 80 on Highway 93 south. A crash report from Montana Highway Patrol released on Wednesday said the car Angst was driving, a Ford Focus, was making a lefthand turn at the junction of Old Highway 93 and Highway 93 South. The deputy’s car, a Dodge Charger, was traveling south.

“(The Ford) made a left turn from a stop sign and drove into the path of vehicle two,” the trooper’s report stated. The Ford was hit on its driver’s side.

Sharyl Allen, a GOP candidate for Montana Superintendent of Public Instruction and the current superintendent of Harrison Public School District, was placed on paid administrative leave effective immediately by the Harrison school board on Tuesday night.

The small K-12 school is located in the town of Harrison in southwest Montana.

There's a new home for Soft Landing's United We Eat program. Also, there are new tours of downtown Missoula's history, including one of the former red light district.

Best friends Tracey Rider and Frances Weeks had no idea that a single piece of fry bread could change their lives — and the lives of many others in their community.

In 2021, the two were running the Fort Peck Tribe's temporary homeless shelter on an entirely volunteer basis. Rider, 53, cooked for the homeless each night. Weeks, 56, went door to door, collecting donations to support their efforts.

Things went well at first. They hosted weekly bingo nights, requiring attendees to be sober to play. And Rider usually cooked meals for about 100 people a night.

About a year later, though, the donations slowed. Rider and Weeks were almost out of money.If they couldn’t do this work anymore, there'd be no one to replace them and nowhere for the reservation's homeless to go.

If someone had told Rider and Weeks at the time that they’d soon launch a booming food business that would bolster their volunteer efforts, they wouldn’t have believed it. Something like that would take a miracle.

A person was killed in a wreck with a Missoula County Sheriff’s Office deputy on Tuesday morning, according to local authorities.

At 9:30 a.m., a deputy “was involved in a 2-vehicle crash near mile marker 80 on Highway 93 South,” a news release from the MCSO stated. The crash happened near Lolo.

The driver of the second car was pronounced dead on scene. The deputy was brought to a local hospital with non-life-threatening injuries, the release said.

According to MCSO spokesperson Jeannette Smith, the wreck did not happen during a pursuit.

Montana Highway Patrol is investigating the crash and the Lake County Sheriff's Office will be the coroner.

The sheriff’s office extended their condolences to the family and friends of the person who died. The victim's identity has not been released by authorities yet.

A man was killed in an officer-involved shooting in Missoula early Tuesday morning.

Shortly after 2 a.m., a Missoula Police officer initiated a traffic stop for suspected impaired driving on the 700 block of South Orange Street, according to a Missoula Police Department press release.

The driver, 32, was uncooperative and fled in his vehicle, and then on foot, the release said.

"Despite efforts to apprehend the male peacefully, the situation escalated as the male remained uncooperative and was found to be in possession of a firearm," the release said.

Shots were fired, and the male driver was injured. Lifesaving measures were immediately administered before the man was taken to the hospital, where he died, according to the release.

No MPD officers sustained any injuries.

The University of Montana plans to add parking spots on campus this summer to make up for parking that will be lost when a new residence hall is built.

The additional parking spots would replace the courtyard between Miller and Duniway Halls, most of the tennis courts near the University Center, and two smaller lots near Aber Hall and Washington-Grizzly Stadium.

The project is set to break ground this summer, according to UM spokesperson Dave Kuntz. The four new lots would add 215 new parking spots for the cost of $2 million. Kuntz said the university has already gained approval from the Board of Regents, which oversees public universities in Montana, and the lots could be in place by the fall 2024 semester.

As a part of state law, the university presented the project to Missoula City Council on Monday night, but the council has no authority to approve or deny the project.

U.S. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy announced on Monday that the Postal Service will pause a plan to consolidate facilities across the country, including a plan to move the Missoula Processing and Delivery Center operations to Spokane.

In a letter sent to the U.S. Senate, DeJoy said the consolidation of processing facility operations would be paused until at least January of 2025.

The move comes in the wake of fierce opposition to the plan from many U.S. senators, including both Montana Sens. Jon Tester and Steve Daines.

More than 17,000 Missoula County voters will get a ballot with a race they technically cannot vote for after a proofing error caused the Montana Public Service Commission District 4 election to incorrectly appear.

The Missoula County Elections Office said in a release Monday that the error affected 16 Missoula County precincts, mostly in the northeast area of the county.

The PSC District 4 election incorrectly made it on the Missoula County ballot likely due to confusion over the PSC redistricting process last year, the Missoula County Elections Office said in a press release.

Previously, Missoula County was entirely in District 4. Now, the county is split in half — mainly along I-90 — between District 4 andDistrict 5. The elections office appears to have used the old map for the primary election.

Half of Missoula County will still vote for the PSC District 4 race, which is an uncontested race. Jennifer Fielder, a Republican and incumbent to the position, is running unopposed.

A 20-year-old Missoula man died Saturday from injuries sustained in a May 4 motorcycle crash near the intersection of Orange Street and Cregg Lane.

According to a Missoula Police Department report, the man was riding northbound on Orange Street "at a high rate of speed" on a Kawasaki Ninja ZX-6R sport bike when he lost control of the motorcycle, crossed the center line and collided with a southbound Ford Ranger pickup truck driven by a 29-year-old Missoula man.

The driver of the truck was wearing a seat belt and was not injured, according to the report. The report stated that the motorcycle rider was not wearing a helmet, but a GoFundMe online fundraiser established by the rider's mother said that he was wearing a helmet.

The rider's mother, Eden Atwood, identified him on the GoFundMe as Benjamin "Benny" Atwood. In public updates, she described surgeries for multiple injuries last week and the monitoring of severe brain trauma, before a wrenching decision to remove her son from life support. She noted that his organs were donated to needing recipients.

"My angel saved four lives today," she wrote. "A teenage boy will receive his strong heart. Three other people will receive liver and kidneys. Happy Mother’s Day to the mothers whose children, young or old, will have more life and my son lives on."

While Montana’s election this year for chief justice may get higher billing than the race for associate justice of the Supreme Court, the latter stands apart for its candidates— two experienced district court judges.

The election to replace Associate Justice Dirk Sandefur is shaping up to be a contest between Flathead County District Court Judge Dan Wilson and District Court Judge Katherine Bidegaray, whose judicial district includes Richland, Wibaux, Dawson, McCone and Prairie counties.

Inversely, Jerry O’Neil of Columbia Falls is also running, but has never been a member of the State Bar of Montana.

The top two vote-getters in the June primary election will advance to the ballot in November.

In recent interviews, both Bidegaray and Wilson said independence of the court is paramount. Still, the race's nonpartisan label hasn’t necessarily prevented politics from taking hold in recent cycles.

The courts have remained a fixture in political discourse as theRepublican-majorityLegislature and GOP-controlledexecutive branch contend rulings that have limited or struck down their policy goals as unconstitutional are examples of judicial overreach.

The legal community has repeatedly sparred against those allegations, warning that undermining the courts for political gain would jeopardize the vast court system that serves the public far beyond settling policy disputes.

Between 2016 and 2022, hospitalizations and emergency room visits for "cannabis poisonings" in Montana for people ages 0-17 went up 200%, according to Missoula Public Health’s substance use prevention coordinator Leah Fitch-Brody. In Missoula County, that number was 142% for kids between ages 0-14.

Fitch-Brody was citing statistics from the Montana Hospital Association and was speaking to the Missoula City Council last week during an informational presentation about youth cannabis use.

The city council members heard from Ben Cort, an author and consultant who city council member Amber Sherrill called a “recognized expert on cannabis policy.”

Sherrill said that she and fellow council member Gwen Jones invited Cort to speak about what other communities are doing as marijuana is becoming legalized in more places.

“Since I think in a lot of states it came down without as much direction as maybe would have been ideal,” Sherrill said.

A woman is facing a vehicular homicide charge following a deadly crash in Polson on Sunday.

At 3:45 p.m., local authorities responded to a head-on crash at the north end of the Armed Forces Bridge in Polson, according to a news release from the Polson Police Department. The driver traveling south, identified in the news release as Sarah Loschke, is suspected of crossing over into northbound traffic.

She allegedly struck an oncoming car, driven by Arden Cowan, the news release said. Cowan was pronounced dead because of the crash.

Impairment is believed to be a suspected factor in the crash, the release said, but the wreck is still under investigation. Loschke is in custody at the Lake County jail, facing a pending vehicular homicide while under the influence charge, jail records show.

She was arrested after she was taken to a hospital.

The Elk Creek fire south of Skalkaho Pass in the southern Sapphire Mountains is holding at 99 acres, and it was caused by an escaped debris burn on private property.

The U.S. Forest Service, which oversees 29 acres of the burned area and handled firefighting efforts on the fire, stated in an update midday Tuesday that the fire stayed within its 99-acre footprint despite strong winds on Monday, and that crews had established containment line around the blaze. Some firefighters were to be pulled off the fire at the end of Tuesday, the agency stated, and Tuesday's update was the final one for the fire unless activity increases.

Wildland firefighters from the Pintler Ranger District of the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest would continue to work the fire for a few more days, the agency stated, including securing the containment line 20 feet into the fire perimeter.Previously, three wildland fire engine crews, one helicopter, one hotshot crew of 20 people and "15–20 other miscellaneous firefighters" were assigned to the fire.

One person was injured after a firearm accidentally went off in East Missoula on Sunday evening.

At 7:24 p.m., the Missoula County Sheriff's Office responded to shots fired at the 600 block of Michigan Avenue in East Missoula, according to a news release.

Authorities determined it was an accidental gun discharge, and one person was injured and transported to a Missoula hospital, the news release stated.

Officials don't believe there's a public safety risk, the release stated, but an investigation into the incident is ongoing.

The yellowing pages fill binders packed into cardboard boxes at the Missoula Smokejumper Base; they contain almost a century of profound but niche history: every jump made by every smokejumper there since the program started in 1940.

Some of the earliest records, mainly in the '40s, are handwritten. Fine, flowing script preserves the names, ages and weights of the jumpers, and the dates, aircraft, forests and wildfires they jumped on — plus practice and refresher jumps around town. Some pages record the final jumps of those who didn't return.

Thompson, Silas. 21 years old. 175 pounds. "Fatally burned on Helena fire 8/5/49."

The fading records, and their corresponding volumes at the West Yellowstone and Grangeville, Idaho, bases, would have been consigned to profound obscurity if not for Missoula's Roger Savage.

Now 86, Savage spent decades meticulously building a digital database of every smokejumper and every jump in U.S. Forest Service Region 1. In conjunction with the National Smokejumper Association, he built and maintains a national database estimated to contain 99% of the barely 6,000 smokejumpers in U.S. history. He has datasets ordered chronologically by fire, others alphabetically by last name. They're searchable and online.

On Saturday morning, Savage's efforts yielded him a degree from the University of Montana. This was no honorary degree, but an earned Master's of Science in Forestry from the W. A. Franke College of Forestry and Conservation.

A teenager is facing a false reporting charge, prompting police to drop a case of attempted kidnapping against a Kalispell man.

On May 8, police responded to a Kalispell gas station on Highway 93 for a reported disturbance. After talking to witnesses, they arrested a 38-year-old man, but on Friday, the Kalispell Police Department reported they wouldn’t be referring the attempted kidnapping charge to the county attorney’s office for prosecution.

Instead, the 16-year-old juvenile male who initially accused the man of trying to pull him into a car, is now charged with filing a false police report, KPD said in a news release.

The adult suspect originally arrested is still in custody on a probation violation.

Photos fromthe University of Montana's Spring 2024 Commencement ceremony at the Adams Center, Saturday, May 11, 2024.

“Through the sleepiness, through the pride, through the nervousness of a new beginning, find the joy,” Lily Gladstone said to an Adams Center filled with hundreds of University of Montana graduates and their families on Saturday morning.

Split between two ceremonies, more than 1,600 students earned their degrees on Saturday at commencement. Gladstone received an honorary doctorate at the ceremony along with Carol Tatsey-Murray, both Blackfeet women.

“It’s a remarkable feat to do what you’ve all done,” Gladstone said, who added she didn’t prepare written remarks ahead of her speech, but was inspired just by seeing UM’s graduates filter the ceremony and laugh with their friends as they prepared to walk across the stage. She encouraged students to embrace the unknown as they head out to new adventures post-graduation.

Gladstone was raised on the Blackfeet Reservation and said after her family moved away for several years, she returned to Montana and came back to UM for college as soon as she could.

“My compass has pointed to the University of Montana for a long, long time,” Gladstone said.

She graduated from UM in 2008 and was heavily involved in the university’s theater program. She’s since earned international acclaim and made history becoming the first Indigenous person to win a Golden Globe award for best actress and the first to be nominated for best actress at the Oscars for her role in “Killers of the Flower Moon.”

“Commencement is the beginning, and it’s so beautiful that commencement happens in the spring, when life is renewing, when life is brand new,” Gladstone said.

Parents, friends and loved ones of graduates cheered and clapped as more than 1,600 students from UM’s colleges walked on stage to receive their diplomas. UM President Seth Bodnar acknowledged this year’s graduates were up against difficulties during their time on campus, like the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, but that they saw many successes, too.

When Mikalen Running Fisher left her home and family on the Blackfeet Reservation in 2017 to attend the University of Montana, she didn’t know what to expect.

She looked forward to cheering on the Griz and to meeting new people, but beyond that, Running Fisher wasn’t sure what this next step would bring.

College was more isolating than she’d expected.

“I grew up in a big household, like a really big household,” she said. “When I came to college, I didn’t realize it would just be me.”

Running Fisher was often the only Native American student in her classes, and it felt embarrassing to be different at times. She hesitated to share her thoughts in class discussions.

And she was homesick. She missed her big family— her cousins who she grew up with and her grandparents who raised her. In her first semester, Running Fisher made the 200-mile drive home to Browning every weekend.

With time though, things got easier. Running Fisher made friends. She connected with professors. She joined the university’s American Indian Student Services group. And she chose a major— Native American Studies.

Running Fisher loved learning about the Blackfeet and other tribes across the state. She learned about U.S. assimilation policies that targeted Native Americans, including members of her own family. And she learned about how historical trauma ripples through generations, often contributing to suicide, addiction or depression today.

“Within my family, we have a lot of people that struggle with those things,” she said. “And I never did understand why— until I started learning our own history. … Our people were stripped of our cultural ways. (That affects) our identity and our well-being.”

Running Fisher also learned about strength and resiliency— how her ancestors fought to survive and stood up to oppressors.

A group of Missoula residents will try to collect 9,300 signatures to try to get an initiative to ban single-use plastics within city limits on the November ballot.

The group, called Families for a Livable Climate Beyond Plastics Working Group, announced on Friday that they've submitted a ballot petition to the Missoula County Elections Office.

If the petition is approved, Missoula voters would decide whether to adopt a new ordinance. It would "prevent any business or city government facility from providing single-use plastic bags and polystyrene items such as foam cups, food containers or packing peanuts."

The law would also prevent food vendors from giving out plastic straws or beverage stirrers unless requested by a customer.