Missoula Weekly Crime Report: DUIs, a Robbery, and Two Trials

Missoula, MT (KGVO-AM News) - The Missoula County Attorney’s Office filed 16 new felony complaints this week, which is one more than last week and right around the weekly average. According to County Attorney Matt Jennings, there were three endangerment crimes, and they all involved driving under the influence and endangering other people on the road. 

“There is a DUI where you get pulled over for a taillight being out or something and having too much to drink that evening,” Jennings said. “But we get a lot of these that end up in high-speed chases with really dangerous driving behavior. I've mentioned a couple of times in recent weeks how we get, sadly, about one person a month driving the wrong way on the Interstate. Those end up getting elevated into felonies.” 

There were also four property crimes and three drug crimes this week. 

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“A few of these people were on probation,” Jennings said. “One of these folks who committed a robbery this week had actually just been sentenced on another felony a couple of days before that. So that was really disappointing to see. Probation is often effective in trying to keep people in line, but not for everybody.” 

Read More: Missoula Woman Arrested For Robbery Two Times in One Week

Jennings said his office was also working on two jury trials at the same time. 

“Both of those are pretty major and serious domestic violence cases,” Jennings said. “A lot of our trials that do go to a jury trial relate to sex offenses or domestic violence. The stakes are high for defendants, and they're often very difficult in a sort of a he-said-she-said situation in a trial. We see a lot of those go to trial in proportion to the number that we filed, but we're doing our best.” 

In addition, there were six violent crimes, and Jennings said they have been seeing a bit of an uptick in those offenses. There were three partner or family member assaults or strangulations and three instances of non-family violence. 

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