Missoula County Attorney’s Office Deals With Higher Case Load

Missoula County Attorney Kirsten Pabst says her office was busy last week with a bunch of new cases.

"We had two methamphetamine cases, two theft cases one involving the failure to return a rental car, two child endangerment cases which are always sad and challenging, aggravated DUI, a stalking case,  three partner family member assaults, two of them being felonies, and a counterfeiting case which involved counterfeiting casino tickets."

Pabst was asked about a recent case in Bozeman where an ex-boyfriend broke into the home of Darcy Buhmann and shot her death. The accused murderer, Anthony Fagiano, had had multiple run-ins with the law over his treatment of Buhmann, who even had a restraining order against him. Pabst said a group called “Just Response” in Missoula, meets to try to keep domestic abuse cases from escalating.

"We get all the agencies together on the table to talk and identify gaps and services and situations like that where in hind site if somebody could have done something differently, or if somebody would have responded quicker to that, or if a call could have been patched through to a different agency, for example so those tragic events like what happened in Bozeman don't happen."
Overall, the Missoula County Attorney’s Office handled 14 new cases last week: a case load, which is about a third higher than normal.