Missoula Crime Report: Exposing a Child to Fentanyl

Missoula, MT (KGVO-AM News) - The Missoula County Attorney’s Office filed 17 new felony complaints this week, which is the same as last week and right around the weekly average. According to County Attorney Matt Jennings, eight were crimes of violence against persons. 

“The silver lining this week is that we only had one domestic violence incident,” Jennings said. “Often our family violence is about half of all the violent crimes that we have and it's been growing a little bit. I've put a lot of thought into that. I actually hope that it's growing, not because there's more family violence, but perhaps victims are getting more comfortable reporting it, or coming forward, or telling other people about an abusive relationship.” 

In addition, Jennings said there were two endangerment crimes and one involved a child being exposed to fentanyl. 

“We are seeing a lot more of these where children are in close proximity to drugs,” Jennings said. “We actually test hair samples to see if they've actually been exposed. Unfortunately, a lot of children in our community are and we take these extremely seriously. We try and take them to the finish line, but they can surprisingly be pretty hard to prosecute because we often have a lot of folks living in the house or kids being cared for by multiple individuals and everybody says they don't know how they got exposed.” 

Jennings said those are usually not the most truthful statements, but his office does what it can to make sure that those folks are held accountable. He said they have tools to make sure that those kids can be removed from their parents if they are constantly being exposed to dangerous or unsafe situations. 

“We had two property crimes, three drug crimes, and two administrative crimes,” Jennings said. “These were fugitive warrants and that sounds really bad, but it really just means there's a warrant for somebody from out of state. Sometimes it is a serious offenses and sometimes it is a vehicle theft, which is still serious but not necessarily a danger to the community.” 

READ MORE: Missoula News - Crime Reports

Jennings also mentioned some upcoming trials that are keeping his office busy. 

“On September 9 we have Cole Levine’s case, which was an attempted rape case back in the summer of 2022,” Jennings said. “It was frankly every woman's worst nightmare about being assaulted for a sexual purpose in downtown Missoula. We've put a lot of resources into this. We're happy to get this victim some justice and get this to trial in a couple of weeks.” 

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: