Montana Bar Shooting Leaves Four Dead, Triggers Intense Manhunt and Town Lockdown
Four people were gunned down on Friday morning at the Owl Bar in Anaconda, Montana, sparking a tense lockdown and a massive manhunt across a nearby wooded area. The incident marked the ninth mass murder in the US this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive, which tracks such tragedies as events involving four or more deaths.
All of these incidents have been shootings, with four mass murders erupting in just the last 30 days—a chilling stretch that began on 2 July. This shooting was also the second deadly attack in a single week, following Monday’s bloodshed in New York City, where a man stormed a skyscraper housing the NFL’s headquarters, killing four before taking his own life.
The Montana shooting unfolded around 10:30am at the popular Owl Bar, according to the state’s Division of Criminal Investigation, which is now leading the probe. Four victims were found dead at the scene.
The suspected gunman, identified as 45-year-old Michael Paul Brown, reportedly lived next door to the bar. Officials said his home was cleared by a tactical unit, and he was last seen in the Stump Town area, just west of Anaconda.
In response, over a dozen officers from local and state agencies flooded the zone, enforcing a strict lockdown—nobody in, nobody out. A helicopter hovered above the mountainside, while armed officers combed through the trees, said Randy Clark, a retired cop and local resident.
Bar owner David Gwerder confirmed that the victims were a bartender and three patrons. He wasn’t present during the attack but said he believed the four were the only ones in the bar at the time.
Authorities warned that Brown was armed, according to a statement by Montana Highway Patrol.
Records show Brown served in the U.S. Army from 2001 to 2005 as an armor crewman, including a tour in Iraq from early 2004 to March 2005. He later joined the Montana National Guard, serving until March 2009, leaving with the rank of sergeant.
As the shooting rattled through the town’s grapevine, businesses shut down and residents sheltered in place. At Caterpillars to Butterflies Childcare, a nearby nursery, owner Sage Huot locked the doors and kept the children inside all day. “We regularly do active shooter drills, so we locked the facility and moved the kids away from windows,” she said.
Anaconda, a town of about 9,000 residents, sits about 75 miles southeast of Missoula and was once a booming hub during the copper mining era of the 1800s.
At the Firefly Cafe, owner Barbie Nelson said she shut her doors around 11am after hearing about the violence from a friend. “We’re used to guns here—it’s Montana,” she said. “But to see our whole town on lockdown? That’s got everybody shaken up.”