Missoula Couple Charged With Severely Injuring a Puppy

Missoula, MT (KGVO-AM News) - The Missoula County Attorney’s Office filed 12 new felony complaints this week, which is six fewer than last week and less than the weekly average. According to County Attorney Matt Jennings, only eight of those were from arrests.

“We filed four that were out of custody, and those are usually things that involve a little bit more investigation, or there were delayed reports, or they're a serious offense but didn't require an immediate arrest,” Jennings said. “Within our offenses this week, we had six violent crimes. Two of those were family violence, those were partner or family member assaults or strangulation, and two of them were nonfamily violence. We did have two sex assault cases this week.”

Jennings said there were four felony DUIs this week, which is a fourth or subsequent offense.

“One of these was particularly disturbing,” Jennings said. “There was an individual who was called in for being suspected of being intoxicated at a 7-year-old's baseball game, where he was yelling at parents and coaches. Because law enforcement was called, they stopped his vehicle as he was leaving. He was intoxicated, and that was his fifth DUI. He bailed out, and the next day he got another felony for violating an order of protection.”

According to Jennings, statistics show that by the time you get stopped for DUI, you’ve probably driven drunk another 100 times.

“These folks that are getting stopped four, five, or six times in their life, we know that this is actually a regular pattern of their activity,” Jennings said. “They've already had chances to get some treatment to not drive when they're drinking, and those haven't worked. They go away to a DOC program for up to 13 months to get alcohol treatment, and then they're on felony probation.”

Jennings said DUI trials are some of the hardest to prosecute.

“When people show up, they’re often not exactly criminally minded,” Jennings said. “They're usually people struggling with addiction, and jurors often feel really bad for them. We also can't tell the juries that they've had four or five DUIs. So, juries often think that this is sort of a one-off mistake and that can be really frustrating for us. We do everything we can to prosecute them, hold them accountable, and also get them treatment.

Disturbing Animal Cruelty Case

Jennings also wanted to highlight a serious animal cruelty case that occurred this week.

“Really sadly, this puppy had 14 broken bones from the abusive from its owners and had to be euthanized,” Jennings said. “We see a lot of violence against humans and children, and every one of those tears at our heartstrings. But there's something uniquely disturbing about animal cruelty. We prosecute those, and they are felonies when you hurt an animal to that level. Luckily, we don't have a lot of these, but we probably had about a dozen a year that we have to deal with and really scratch our heads about how somebody could be so cruel and evil to a young animal like that.”

The Missoula County Attorney’s Office provides a weekly crime report every Friday morning at 9:00 on Talk Back.