The Montana Highway Patrol reported a trooper was shot early Friday morning in the Evaro area and a suspect has been arrested.
The trooper was taken to a Missoula hospital. There is no word on the trooper’s condition.
The suspect remained at large until approximately 6:15 a.m. when the Missoula County Sheriff’s Office’s Special Response Team took Johnathan Bertsch into custody on the 16000 block of Thornburg Way. No other suspects are being sought.
U.S. Highway 93 North was closed north of the Wye to near mile marker 7 Friday morning.
A post from the Missoula County Sheriff’s Office reads:
***SUSPECT ARRESTED*** At approximately 6:15 this morning our Special Response Team took Johnathan Bertsch into custody on the 16000 block of Thornburg Way without incident. No other suspects are being sought. Residents are welcome to leave their homes. The highway will open within the next half hour. Any further questions regarding the initial shooting should be referred to the Missoula Police Department and any questions regarding the second shooting should be referred to John Barnes with the DOJ. Please keep the Montana Highway Patrol Trooper who sustained injuries this morning in your thoughts and prayers.
(1st Report, 5:15 a.m.) Law enforcement from across Missoula County and even neighboring counties remain on the lookout for a suspect who was involved in two overnight shootouts.
Missoula police received the initial call shortly before 11 p.m. Thursday with reports of gunfire and that multiple people had been shot near the Stone Creek Lodge, at Expressway and Tanager Way.
Missoula Police Department spokesman Sgt. Travis Welsh said when the first officers rolled up they confirmed two people had been shot, and a third uninjured person who had made the 911 call.
From the beginning, Missoula units were looking for a Cadillac SUV with patrol cars fanning out and looking throughout the surrounding residential area and starting to block off traffic to preserve the crime scene and evidence on Expressway.
But after the initial police response at Expressway, the scene quickly changed with officers going as far north as Evaro and as far south as Lolo in attempts to locate the suspect. That’s when other agencies began to jump into the case.
“The jurisdiction changed in January. So that used to be county property. Now it’s actually city property,” Missoula County Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman Brenda Bassett said. “But we have MHP, obviously the Missoula County Sheriff’s Office, Missoula Police Department, Airport Police and then we have multiple agencies in neighboring counties.”
That response ramped up quickly after the report of the second, officer-involved shooting on Evaro Hill, less than an hour later, forcing investigators to not only look for the shooter but cope with the additional stress.
“There’s two active investigations that are very fresh. There’s so many different moving parts. So I think with the different jurisdictions they’re still working on a lot of those details,” Bassett told MTN News.
For a time after the shooting, Providence St. Patrick Hospital, where the first victims were taken, was on a security lockdown as a precaution.
“It’s moving very fast, so we’re just really trying to take care of that number one priority of keeping the public safe,” Bassett said.
