Four people were killed on Friday in a shooting at a Montana bar, prompting a lockdown in a neighborhood several miles away as authorities searched a wooded area for a suspect in the case.
The shooting brought the number of mass murders so far this year in the US to nine, according to the Gun Violence Archive, a non-partisan resource which defines such cases as killings in which four or more victims are killed.
All those mass murders were shootings, and four have occurred in a 30-day period beginning 2 July. It was the US’s second mass murder since Monday, when a man attacked a New York City skyscraper housing the National Football League’s headquarters and shot four people dead before dying by suicide.
Friday’s mass murder in Montana happened at about 10.30am at the Owl Bar in Anaconda, according to the state’s division of criminal investigation. The agency, which is leading the investigation into the shooting, confirmed four people were pronounced dead at the scene.
The suspect, who was identified as 45-year-old Michael Paul Brown, lived next door to the bar, according to public records. Authorities said a tactical team cleared Brown’s home and that he was last seen in the Stump Town area just west of Anaconda.
More than a dozen officers from local and state police converged on that area, locking it down so no one was allowed in or out. A helicopter also hovered over a nearby mountainside as officers moved among the trees, Randy Clark – a retired police officer who lives there – told the Associated Press.
Officials later said they had found the car Brown used to flee the scene of the bar killings, but the search for him continued into Sunday.
The owner of the Owl Bar, David Gwerder, said a bartender and three patrons were killed in the shooting. Gwerder, who was not there at the time, said he believed the four victims were the only ones present during the shooting.
Brown was believed to be armed, the Montana highway patrol said in a statement.
Brown served in the US army as an armor crewman from 2001 to 2005 and was deployed to Iraq from early 2004 until March 2005, according to an army spokesperson. He was in the Montana national guard from 2006 to March 2009 and left military service in the rank of sergeant.
As reports of the shooting spread through town, business owners locked their doors and sheltered inside with customers. At Caterpillars to Butterflies Childcare, a nursery a few blocks from the shooting scene, owner Sage Huot said she had kept the children inside all day after someone called to let her know about the violence.
“We’re constantly doing practice drills, fire drills and active shooter drills, so we locked down the facility, locked the doors, and we have a quiet spot where we play activities away from all of our windows and doors,” Huot said.
Anaconda is about 75 miles (120km) south-east of Missoula. A town of about 9,000 people in a valley hemmed in by mountains, it was founded by copper barons who profited off nearby mines in the late 1800s.
The owner of the Firefly Cafe in Anaconda said she locked up her business at about 11am on Friday after being alerted to the shooting by a friend.
“We are Montana, so guns are not new to us,” cafe owner Barbie Nelson said. “For our town to be locked down, everybody’s pretty rattled.”
Associated Press contributed reporting
